The Army has doubled maintainer training for its new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles from 40 to 80 hours to address earlier concerns soldiers experienced while working on fixes to the vehicles during the evaluation period, an official told Defense Daily Monday.
Col. Shane Fullmer, project manager for JLTV, said the Army addressed maintenance issues that were outlined in the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation annual report released last week by finalizing vehicle manuals.
“A vehicle that provides more capability is going to be more complex. The training was shorter than we thought it should have been, so we doubled the maintainer training,” Fullmer told Defense Daily.
The DOT&E report, which provides data from FY ’18, noted users experienced issues performing maintenance on the JLTVs, such as fixing engine wiring, without the assistance of the contractor, Oshkosh [OSK].
Officials wrote in the report the vehicles “are not operationally suitable because of deficiencies in reliability, maintainability, training, manuals” based on the feedback from earlier evaluations.
“We believe that we learned things coming out of that test. We’ve addressed each one of those things. We put a lot of effort into it over the last almost year now. We think we’ve got every one of those things addressed,” Fullmer said.
George Mansfield, vice president and general manager of Oshkosh’ Joint Programs, told Defense Daily vendors competing for JLTV weren’t initially asked to provide mature maintenance manuals but have since provided finalized versions with fielding.
Mansfield said the company went into the evaluations knowing that its manuals weren’t as mature as they would be when the vehicles begin fielding.
“Now that we’re fielding vehicles, our manuals are all up to date and complete and have been authenticated,” he said. “So that’s behind us now.”
The first JLTVs were delivered to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team – 3rd Army Division in Ft. Stewart in Georgia in late January.
A full-rate production decision is slated for late April to early May, according to Mansfield.