It looks commanders will have another vehicle to choose from to meet mission requirements:
JLTV picture from Oshkosh website.
Now after 25 years in service it is apparent the Humvee can’t do it all. It won’t exactly be the end of the road for the Humvee, but the military may be putting drivers behind the wheel of other, more versatile alternative vehicles.
“Many of these units will start to be phased out by the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) made by Oshkosh,” added Frost & Sullivan’s Curran. “In addition, special operations command operates various small engine and electrical vehicles made by recreational off road makers like Polaris and others.”
The JLTV isn’t the first vehicle to offer an alternative option to the Humvee – as the military already has the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected or MRAP, the special armored vehicles that were designed to counter land mines. From 2007 until 2012 some 12,000 MRAPs were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just as the MRAP didn’t replace the Humvee the JLTV won’t replace it either.
“This isn’t a complete replacement for the Humvee,” Dan Wasserbly, editor at Jane’s, told FoxNews.com. “The Army is simply looking for a vehicle that has greater tactical mobility. Something that is lighter and faster than a modern Humvee.”
It is instead about finding the right vehicle for the job. What the MRAP provided in armor and protection was offset by a lack of mobility. [Fox News]
You can read much more at the link to include some interesting history about the HMMWV. What I find interesting is that I went to Oshkosh’s website and the JLTV looks like a re-booted MATV which means it would be bigger than a HMMWV not lighter.
I just hope the Army doesn’t buy more JLTVs than what is needed. I would hate to see a bunch of these vehicles collecting dust sitting around on a FOB in Afghanistan like what happened with the MRAP program. There were so many MRAPs sitting around collecting dust that the Army had them recycled into scrap metal.
