“We are still on track and still doing a lot of work to the facility,” Force Protection communications director Tommy Pruitt said Monday. “We have done a lot of work to the building and a lot of roof work that needed to be done and we’re still completing that.”

Even so, Pruitt said that company officials are pleased with the progress at the site to date.

“The local community is still working well to get things done,” Pruitt said. “Everybody has been very cooperative.”

When pressed for a timeline for the completion of the facility’s first mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks, also known as MRAPs, Pruitt said no date has been set.

“I really don’t want to commit to a date at this point,” Pruitt said. “There could be some other things that we could run into. Until we have a good idea of a time frame, I think it is best to not try and pinpoint a date.”

Pruitt went on to say, however, that Force Protection officials would likely “have another media event of some kind when we are ready” with the completion of the first vehicle.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that with violence in Iraq subsiding, Force Protection could begin realizing a drop in production.

According to the report, the Marine Corps initially planned on buying 3,700 of Force Protection’s vehicles, but recently trimmed that total by 1,300. The report went on to say that the Army is considering a similar reduction.

The net result of that information has dropped Force Protection’s stock price, which soared when orders first began coming in for the MRAPs.

When asked if the recent reduction in orders had altered Force Protection’s plans for the Roxboro facility, Pruitt said “not up to this point.”

The Roxboro facility is slated to produce a smaller MRAP vehicle known as the Cheetah. That should bode well for the Person County facility, former Force Protection chief executive Gordon McGilton, who retired last month, told The Wall Street Journal.

McGilton reportedly told the publication that Force Protection could overcome future cutbacks by retrenching, selling trucks to foreign militaries and producing MRAP spare parts. He went on to say that he believed the U.S. military would order more of the company’s armored vehicles, including the new Cheetah that would be built at the Roxboro facility, because the success of MRAPs in Iraq has raised expectations that U.S. forces will be protected from roadside bombs no matter where they are deployed.