Army, Marines to Acquire 50,000 New Trucks to Replace Humvees

[GAP]

Army, Marines to Acquire 50,000 New Trucks to Replace Humvees
February 2007 By Harold Kennedy
Article Link

A fistful of defense companies will be vying to win a contract to develop a replacement for the humvee — the Army and Marine Corps’ light, all-terrain truck.

Later this year, the Marine Corps and the Army will seek industry bids for the so-called “family of joint light tactical vehicles.” The target date for introducing the new vehicle is 2012, said Lt Col. Ben Garza, project manager.

The Army initially plans to buy 392 vehicles for tests, and eventually could begin to acquire as many as 4,291 per year to equip seven brigades annually. The Army estimates it will need 38,421 JLTV vehicles through 2020.

The Marine Corps projects buys of up to 14,150 vehicles through 2020.

Since production began in 1984, AM General of South Bend, Ind., has manufactured more than 190,000 humvees — or high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles. During the fighting in Iraq, the vehicle has aged faster than expected. The humvee’s peacetime service life is 14 years, but in combat it drops to five years.

In addition, emergency measures to protect humvees against roadside bombs in Iraq, such as bolt-on steel armor, have wreaked havoc on the vehicles’ suspensions and engines. Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have destroyed or disabled large numbers of humvees and killed or wounded many of their occupants.

Almost four years after the invasion, nearly all of the tactical vehicles in U.S. Central Command have at least some form of armor protection. But the additional weight diminishes the vehicles’ payload and mobility.

The Office of Naval Research –- acting for the services –- last fall awarded contracts of $500,000 to each of five contractors to come up with conceptual designs and mockups of the vehicles. The companies are AM General, General Dynamics Land Systems, BAE Systems Land and Armament Group, Oshkosh Truck Corp., and Textron Systems Marine & Land Division
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[retiredgrunt45]

Wow, i just thought they would of beefed up to a bigger engine and suspension on the HUMV other than replace it with something new. Interesting to see what comes out to replace it.

Now thats what I call defence spending!!  ;D

 

[mover1]

Wow, i just thought they would of beefed up to a bigger engine and suspension on the HUMV other than replace it with something new. Interesting to see what comes out to replace it.

Thinking like that could get you a staff job at NDHQ........lateral thinking like that 4 years ago we would be driving bigger beefer iltis'
I wonder if fuel efficiency is going to be a factor in the design.

 

[Mike Baker]

Interesting. Are they going to be more fuel efficient?

 

[retiredgrunt45]

Thinking like that could get you a staff job at NDHQ........lateral thinking like that 4 years ago we would be driving bigger beefer iltis'
I wonder if fuel efficiency is going to be a factor in the design.

I need something to suppliment my pension anyway and I couldn't do any worse than the weenies there right now ;D

 

[NL_engineer]

Thinking like that could get you a staff job at NDHQ........lateral thinking like that 4 years ago we would be driving bigger beefer iltis'
I wonder if fuel efficiency is going to be a factor in the design.

But can we afford the $4,000 in environmental taxes  :

 

[CougarKing]

another article on the subject:

Move over MRAP: New Light Tactical Vehicles are Coming

National Defense Magazine
April 2008
>>More

MONTEREY, Calif. — There are narrow alleyways and small streets in Fallujah, Iraq, through which most military trucks cannot travel.

Even the formidable mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle — rushed to the battlefield to protect troops from roadside bombs — has difficulties driving in the urban terrain. To cross small bridges, troops must dismount from the vehicle while the driver sticks his foot out the door to “walk” the multi-ton truck across the way, says Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, deputy commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

The scenario may sound like the punch line of a joke, but it is no laughing matter to Defense Department officials speaking here at NDIA’s tactical wheeled vehicles conference. They point to this boots-on-the-ground situation as one of the salient reasons for continuing to buy humvees — the military’s longtime workhorse — while developing its next-generation replacement, the joint light tactical vehicle.

“The reason JLTV is so important to us is because it gives an expeditionary capability back to the Army and the Marine Corps,” says Brig. Gen. John Bartley, the Army’s program executive officer for combat support and combat services support.

That mobility is becoming paramount, as the Army and Marine Corps look beyond the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to anticipate future operations, officials say. The services assert that vehicles suited for urban warfare will continue to be a necessity, and for that reason, the attractiveness of trucks with the agility to navigate city streets — and handle roadside bombs — is growing.

Plagued with aging fleets of combat-worn humvees, the ground forces want to buy as many as 50,000 of the joint light tactical vehicles and have them in operation by the mid-2010s.

 

[geo]

The JLTV looks a bit like one of the early "Eagle I" from Mowag
or the Panhard VBL