Photo: US Army
Oct 17, 2011 By Paul McLeary - Aviationweek.com
The U.S. Marine Corps is interested in “harvesting” technologies form the Army’s Humvee Recap program, but because of the capabilities they have already identified as essential to their mission, they won’t buy any fully Recapped Humvees.
Instead, according to comments made by the Corps’ Dan Pierson, deputy program executive officer for land systems, the service is banking on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) while upgrading—not fully recapping—several thousand Humvees.
“When you look at the requirements that the Marine Corps had for the Humvee Recap, it was much more robust than what the Army is trying to get out of Recap, because we were trying to install a lot more mobility,” with more payload capacity, Pierson said earlier this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention in Washington.
“According to Marine Corps studies, these requirements pushed the Recap price tag “up in the $240,000-250,000 [per truck] range,” which is the same price as a JLTV. Since the JLTV would be brand new, and “has so much more payload, so much more capability” than the Humvee, “the business case analysis for the Marine Corps for the Recap was just not there,” Pierson says.
Pierson added that since the Marines still need to sustain its Humvee fleet, “we’re still going to work very closely with the Army on Humvee Recap and be partners throughout.” In other words, they will take what they can from the Army program, without fully buying in to the effort.
Pierson spoke at a media briefing with Col. David Bassett, Army program manager for Tactical Vehicles, who praised the development of the JLTV, saying that the service has learned plenty of hard lessons about what works and what doesn’t, in trying to marry weight, mobility and protection. Bassett says that achieving Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)-like levels of protection is now possible in a package that weighs about 10,000 lb. less than the original Oshkosh-designed MRAP All Terrain Vehicle (MATV), which itself is much lighter than the MRAP. “What we’ve learned is that there are really no silver bullets to achieve that level of protection,” Basset says. “It’s about good engineering.”
When it comes to recently released light tactical vehicles like Oshkosh’s L-CTV and Navistar’s Saratoga that are aiming to bridge the “gap” between the JLTV and Humvee Recap requirements, Bassett only says that “we do believe that this needs to be competed” and vendors will be able to come in with new solutions once the program is opened up once again to competition. Bassett and Pierson affirmed that the Army wants 50,000 JLTVs, and the Marine Corps wants to buy 5,500.
The JLTV program has seen better days. Last month, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee recommended it be canceled, but no final Congressional vote has been taken. Bassett says canceling JLTV in favor of the Humvee Recap would mean that the Pentagon will not be able to meet all of its light vehicle needs, since Recap can’t meet the payload and protection thresholds that JLTV has demonstrated.
This uncertainty has caused Ashton Carter, the deputy secretary of defense, to recommend to the Australian government—which has long been a partner on the JLTV—to “take a pause” in their involvement, according to Bassett, who added that the Australians are still interested, even if they have temporarily walked away from the program.