By Ann Roosevelt
Oshkosh Corp [OSK] is ready to solve weight and power issues important to the Marine Corps with the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) 4×4 and an MTVR with On-Board Vehicle Power (OBVP), company officials say.
Both vehicles are on display at the Modern Day Marine 2008 at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Va., through Oct. 2.
The MTVR 4×4 and MVTR OBVP are designed around the expeditionary nature of the Marine Corps, Joaquin Salas, marketing manager, Oshkosh Corp., told Defense Daily in an interview.
The MTVR 4×4 is “a complement to the Marine Corps fleet,” Mike Nowak, Oshkosh marketing manager, said. “What it allows the Marine Corps is a lighter more agile MTVR that sustains the performance that they expect, but is more embarkable.”
Essentially, the Marines still have the cubic feet available on amphibious ships, but they’ve run out of weight because of additional armor so fewer vehicles can be put on board.
“The 4×4 reduces the weight significantly, so now the Marine Corps is able to embark their full fleet that they planned for on an amphibious ship,” Nowak said.
“This truck is through and through an MTVR, there’s no difference between it and the others except it only has four tires instead of six,” he said.
There’s 99 percent commonality between the 4×4 and the rest of the MTVR fleet. The one percent left over is the engine. The 4×4 uses a Caterpillar [CAT] C9 engine, the Marines use a C12 on their 6×6 MTVRs.
Oshkosh is using the C9 because Caterpillar will be produce it for the foreseeable future, Nowak said, taking the issue of future production off the table. There are also some fuel efficiency gains to allow the Marines to meet their inland objective past 300 miles.
The 4×4 has a 10-foot cargo bed, compared to 14 feet on the 6×6, but the ratio stays the same, Nowak said. You can carry seven tons on a 14-foot cargo bed; now you can carry five tons on a 10-foot cargo bed.
“The 4×4 was built to support all of the same armor that the 6×6 supports such that protection is not reduced and still carry that five-ton payload off road,” Salas said. “We knew that the Marine Corps would have no interest in a truck that we just made lighter and smaller if it didn’t carry anything. We were very careful to meet the Marine’s strict performance and protection requirements and give them a vehicle that still assisted them in their mission objectives.”
Another major driver for Marine equipment is the ever-increasing need for portable power on the go and while parked to run advanced equipment, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or communications, or to equipment to detonate IEDs.
The other vehicle at the Oshkosh stand is the MTVR with OBVP, which incorporates elements of the company’s proprietary ProPulse technology, demonstrated recently at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. (Defense Daily, May 15).
Salas said OBVP ties back to the 4×4 MTVR. As an expeditionary force, the Marines need to pack up, go places and move fast when they arrive. “The OBVP is specifically designed to enable them to do that better.”
Currently, Marines disembark and tow generators. The MTVR has a 60-inch fording capability so it can drive through five-feet of water. The generators, however , don’t have that height clearance. Towing also reduces the MTVR off-road capability.
In 2006, Oshkosh won a contract to work on OBPV from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
Gary Schmiedel, Oshkosh vice president, Advanced Product Engineering, said “The objectives they wanted were 120 kilowatts of clean military grade power while stationary, they wanted 21 kilowatts of clean export power while driving and they wanted to have the capability to provide those two powers implemented in a kit strategy, so they could take a standard MTVR and convert it to an export power capability.”
To do that, Oshkosh reused the engine, replaced the transmission with a generator and then took the transfer case that’s in a standard MVTR and replaced it with a multimotor box, a transfer case-like assembly with three traction motors in it, he said. That allowed Oshkosh to reuse all the suspension, all the axle components in the standard MVTR.
“That was a key element to the success of the kit integration,” he said.
The MTVR won’t look very different, Schmiedel said, “It’s almost indiscernible to the casual observer. If you are very, very versed on the vehicle you can notice some differences.”
For example, there’s a modest projection of a few inches through the front grill for a heat exchanger, interface points to plug in for power, a seven-inch display in the cab dashboard, and a high voltage distribution box ahead of the cargo body, he said.
MTVR with OBVP offers tactical commanders more flexibility with “everything the MTVR is in terms of mobility and payload and all that and now they have an extra capability and that is this power generation,” Schmiedel said.
Schmiedel said OBVP for ONR is a kit that has been integrated into the 6×6 variant of the MTVR, the MK23 and is working on integrating it into other variants.
The kit could be installed on the MTVR 4×4. It just hasn’t been done yet, Nowak said.
“We have installed these kits and are going through tests for the Office of Naval Research and at the conclusion of the tests we believe that the Marine Corps will be interested in purchasing some of them,” Schmiedel said.
ONR is working with Oshkosh to develop the technology and bring it to the Marine Corps. “The Marine Corps has expressed great interest,” he said, but the program must still transition from ONR to a Marine requirement and subsequent procurement.
Additionally, these recent efforts will also feed into the company’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). Oshkosh is teamed with Northrop Grumman [NOC] in the competition for the new generation Humvee.