SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Arrayed in a semicircle in the infield of AM General’s 300-acre test track here is the future of the Humvee, of which there are more than 250,000 in service worldwide.
Assumed to have been overburdened with armor and gear during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Humvee was never intended to serve as a heavy troop transport. It’s initial operational advantage was off-road mobility.
The six vehicles on display here on what used to be a private hunting preserve for the owner of the Studebaker car company are examples of how the Humvee can regain that advantage while greatly expanding its mission capability.
“You need multipurpose vehicles,” AM General Executive Chairman Jack Keane, a retired Army four-star who last served as Vice Chief of Staff, told reporters during a recent visit to AM General in South Bend, Ind. “When you get to single-purpose vehicles, that drives up the cost considerably and you’re going to be able to do less as a result of it.”
While the Army is purchasing the heavily armored Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace a portion of its legacy Humvee fleet, the company that built the legacy truck has spent untold internal research and development dollars updating the base vehicle.
And while the Army’s equipment is increasingly reliant on software-based electronics, the Humvee is a sturdy, mechanical vehicle that can run through nearly any environment, including deep mud or sand, snow, 60-degree up- and down-slope or a 40-degree sideslope.
It can walk over a 20-inch wall or drive through up to 20 inches of water in its base configuration. With an exhaust snorkel and some engine sealant, it can handle 60 inches of water, though the occupants must deal with water up to their necks.
None of its essential automotive components are reliant on electronics, making it impervious to an electromagentic pulse that would ruin anything with a circuit board.
The M1100 Series Humvee looks much the same as a vehicle than came off the production line in the 1980s, but has upgraded steering components and geometry, higher off-road speed, increased payload capacity and a new geared fan drive. All of the improvements are aimed at boosting reliability and durability.
“The automotive system we build today is significantly better than what we built 30 years ago,” Andy Hove, AM General’s president and chief executive, told reporters during the visit to the company’s Humvee plant. “Bigger engine, more robust transmission, more robust frame rails.”
The reliability of a Humvee today is a four-fold increase over what it originally was, Hove said.
Countries outside the United States have recognized the versatility and affordability of the Humvee and have ordered billions of dollars worth of the trucks from AM General since it lost out on JLTV. The company recently negotiated a $2.2 billion contract for foreign military sales and in a matter of months had secured a half-billion dollars toward the deal.
Whether buying new or upgrading old Humvees, the Army can piggy back on the savings generated by the recent contract, Hove said.
“The benefit to the U.S. Army is now the Army can take advantage of the fully negotiated pricing over the same five-year period as everybody else,” Hove said. “Frankly, the government negotiated a pretty good price reduction on our production. … We took significant cost out of the program and the U.S. can benefit from that.”
During the recent media visit, the factory was churning out about 12 vehicles a day but fluctuates up to a rate of 19 per day including National Guard recapitalized vehicles, depending on demand. There were six different variants on the line going to five countries, but the company makes a total of 22 configurations based on the same M1100 series chassis. The continuously moving production line has produced as many as 80 Humvees a day at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hove said.
The company is building new Humvees and recapitalizing National Guard vehicles with new, more powerful automotive systems. That is possible because the Humvee body is aluminum, which will last 30 to 40 years, much longer than the automotive system and drive train that last less than 10 years, said Hove.
Taking into account that mobility is a form of survivability, the payload monopolized by added armor can be given to other capabilities. That is the idea behind new technology insertion kits, called Enhanced Tactical Applique, on display on different Humvee configurations at the test track. AM General anticipated the capabilities the Army will need from its tactical truck fleet and designed Humvee B-kits to address those needs.
One is outfitted with a TOW guided missile turret, predictably called the Enhance Tactical Guided Missile. Another called the Enhanced Tactical Indirect – nicknamed the Hawkeye – sports front and rear hydraulic stabilizers that steady the 105mm artillery cannon mounted on its bed. The vehicle has demonstrated the ability to stop, deploy its weapon, shoot eight rounds and scoot within three minutes.
In an effort to provide more lethality to infantry units, the Army has mounted a 30 mm cannon on a Stryker and is in the market for a light tank call mobile protected firepower. AM General took the initiative and mounted an M230LF 30mm cannon atop a Humvee. It comes with both a manned or an unmanned remotely operated turret and requires no modification to the vehicle body or chassis to accept the additional weight or withstand the recoil, said Chris Vanslager, the company’s executive vice president for U.S. defense business.
Two other versions of the vehicle provide increased mobility and transportability for airborne or special operations forces. The Enhanced Tactical Mobility vehicle has a nine-man capacity, bristles with swivel-mounted automatic weapons and has a retractable Crush bar to prevent injuries from rollovers.
That vehicle’s smaller cousin, the Enhanced Tactical Transportability also has a nine-man capacity and its body kit reduces the vehicle’s width by eight inches, allowing it to be transported inside a CH-47 Chinook.
Keane said the Army during the last decade and half of war bought vehicles almost exclusively for their ability to protect troops from underbody blasts. But the service ended up with huge, single-purpose vehicles unsuited to other theaters of combat.
“You’re a single-point solution because you’re on the highway and [the enemy knows] that highway is the only avenue affordable to you. But if you have a vehicle that has … cross-country mobility, you not only go off the highway, you go off the road,” Keane said. “The Army has come back into balance from a single-point solution for force protection to a more balanced solution. JLTV is certainly a part of that solution and the Humvee is also part when it comes to light utility vehicle.”
JLTV isn’t expected to enter service until 2019 and then will take as long as 30 years years to buy out the program of record of 49,000, retired Gen. John Campbell, who serves on AM General’s board of directors, said. The Army therefore is scheduled to retain thousands of Humvees even as it seeks to replace a large portion of the legacy fleet. There will be about 50,000 Humvees in the Army’s fleet until almost 2050, Campbell said.
“What AM General is doing is making sure those 50,000 are the best they can be,” Campbell said. “They are going to do a bunch of missions that JLTV or MRAP can’t do at a much, much, much cheaper cost.”