Army - Kicking Tires On Jltv

Muscle for an Uncertain
Performance, Payload and Comfy Seats
Stories By Scott R. Gourley, Contributing Writer
With a smoother ride, roomier and more comfortable
cab, and performance that is off the
charts, the latest generation of Army trucks has
moved well beyond the traditional role of tactical
wheeled vehicles and into the realm of what can only be
seen as “muscle trucks.”
A classic example can be found in the new Joint Light Tactical
Vehicle (JLTV), which was developed under an Armyled
joint acquisition with the U.S. Marine Corps. Following a
successful Defense Acquisition Board and subsequent approval
by the defense acquisition executive, the U.S. Army
awarded Oshkosh Corp. a firm-fixed-price production contract
for the JLTV in late August 2015.
Scott Davis, U.S. Army program executive officer for combat
support and combat service support, said current light tactical
fleet capabilities mean combat commanders “often have
to choose between payload, performance and protection.”
“It is often said that in terms of the JLTV, there were no
significantly stretching technologies,” he said, “but the magic
was in balancing those three things to come up with an optimal
solution.”
Davis also said JLTV will provide protection similar to the
MATV, or MRAP all-terrain vehicle, but at about 2/3 the
weight. The protection will be substantially greater than that
of the Humvee, he said.
One design element that separates U.S. Army muscle trucks
from most other wheeled vehicles involves the need for armor
protection.
“It’s amazing what we learned from 14 years of war,” said
Kevin Fahey, who recently retired as director of the assistant
secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology)
System of Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate,
following earlier service as program executive officer for
combat support and combat service support.
“The survivability we can give to a tactical wheeled vehicle
now would have been unheard of 15 years ago,” Fahey said.
“The things we learned about shaping, space, how you strap
people in seats, resulted in a ‘4X’ increase in survivability for
MRAPs.”
The JLTV family of vehicles is comprised of two-seat and
four-seat variants as well as a companion trailer (JLTV-T). The
two-seat variant has one base vehicle platform, the Utility
36 ARMY ■ February 2016