QUANTICO, Va. – When Marines this week took a hands-on tour of the vehicle that eventually will replace the Humvee, many of them realized they were already familiar with the Oshkosh [OSK] Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). Some even recognized the truck as a smaller derivative of the hulking M-ATV that saved their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan, said John Bryant, Oshkosh senior vice president of defense programs.
“So many of the Marines are already familiar with our M-ATV,” which stands for mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) all-terrain vehicle, he said. “When they see our JLTV, they are really seeing the little brother of our M-ATV. They hop inside it, it looks very familiar to them.”
The vehicle on display at the Modern Day Marine Technology expo here has the same blast protection as an MRAP but can run over open ground at speeds 70 percent faster than those huge armored trucks. The Marine Corps plans to buy 5,500 of them. The Army will purchase 49,000. Together, the orders represent a potential $30 billion and a huge coup for Oshkosh over incumbent Humvee manufacturer AM General and Lockheed Martin [LMT], which teamed with BAE Systems to build its JLTV prototype.
“The Marine’s we’ve seen today are pretty impressed that we could take the protection of the M-ATV, greatly increase the mobility and provide it in a light tactical vehicle,” Bryant said. “You have that survivability and now you’re combining it with the extreme off-road mobility of a Baja racer.”
JLTV will also alter the mobile command-and-control paradigm during expeditionary campaigns. Each vehicle is outfitted with a communications and computing suite that allows every truck to perform as a command post. That used to require a specially kitted vehicle among dozens of vehicles that were only tangentially connected to the battlefield communication network.
Col. John Atkinson, director of the Director Fires & Maneuver Integration Division at Marine Corps Combat Development Command, said JLTV was a perfect example of the service’s effort to enhance the battlefield capabilities of the individual Marine through efforts to lighten and decrease the bulk of their load…increase their [command and control] and linkages to other capabilities that surround him like the F-35, the MV-22, the AAV, the ACV and improve their access to precise and responsive fires is what we’re trying to do for that Marine,” Atkinson said. “Also with JLTV we’re proud of the downselection and the platform we are going to get.”
Although Oshkosh has officially won the $6.7 billion contract for low-rate initial production of the JLTV, production has been halted while the Government Accountability Office processes a protest filed by Lockheed. AM General declined to protest the award, choosing to focus instead on sustainment work on existing Humvee fleets and international orders for the still-popular vehicle.
Oshkosh, meanwhile, is refining its production line and prepositioning parts and materials to jump start production if and when the GAO rejects Lockheed Martin’s protest.
“When you get your stop-work order, it’s sort of like somebody hits the pause button on a DVR,” he said. “The moment it’s disposed of, they hit the play button and whatever you owed the next day, you still owe the next day as soon as they hit play. So we have to be ready to hit the ground running the moment the protest ends. We’re obeying the stop-work order but we are positioning ourselves, we are leaning forward and we’re posturing Oshkosh to be able to hit the ground running as soon as they hit play on that DVR.”