By Emelie Rutherford
A new report on Army trucks leaves out details on the future Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), spurring questions about plans for the multi-service Humvee replacement.
The Army’s Tactical Wheeled Vehicle Acquisition Strategy, required by and recently submitted to Congress, does not list a number of planned JLTVs in a chart of the service’s planned vehicles as of 2025. Instead it states “TBD JLTV.”
The chart, though, lists specific numbers for other tactical-wheeled vehicles expected in the fleet in 15 years, including 15,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) and their all-terrain variants–several thousand less than the service has now.
The report is notable in its omission of a JLTV, a congressional aide and observers said.
Three companies are under contract to build competing JLTV prototypes, as part of its current technology-development phase: BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT], and a General Dynamics [GD]-AM General joint venture called General Tactical Vehicles.
The new report also says the Army will drop from having 260,000 tactical-wheeled vehicles, as of this past April, to 244,000 trucks in 2025. The Army emphasizes plans for recapping and upgrading vehicles as opposed to new production.
The document states several “key” tactical-wheeled vehicle (TWV) documents are not yet approved that will influence the acquisition strategy. Those include the “Draft TWV Long- Term Protection Strategy (LTPS),” “G-8 initiated TWV Strategy Update,” “Phase II of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Truck Study,” and “Department of Defense Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) Study for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTVs).”