The Army on Feb. 2 placed an eighth order for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) that will replace a portion of its and the Marine Corps’ Humvee fleets.
Oshkosh Defense [OSK] took home a $106 million order for 416 JLTVs and 832 associated installed and packaged kits. The previous order for the trucks came in December when the Army paid $100 million for 258 additional JLTVs for delivery in 2019.
Photo: Oshkosh Defense
This latest order should guarantee a running Oshkosh, Wis., JLTV production line through March 2019, according to the Army’s contract announcement.
“The JLTV program, currently in low rate initial production (LRIP), remains a top priority as we continue testing in support of a full-rate production decision in fiscal year 2019,” said George Mansfield, vice president and general manager of joint programs at Oshkosh Defense.
“Working closely with our government customer, we have completed Reliability Qualification Testing, accumulating over 100,000 miles, and have exceeded reliability requirements.”
The JLTV program expects the first Army unit equipped by mid-fiscal 2019 and both the Army and Marine Corps to achieve initial operating capability (IOC) in early fiscal 2020. Orders should continue at a similar cadence – the numbers will ramp up as the program enters FRP – until the program delivers the required amount of trucks for each service.
Army requirements stand at around 50,000 JLTVs. The Marine Corps program of record is 5,500 of the heavily armored trucks, though given adequate funding, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller has said the service could buy nearly 10,000 units to replace a portion of its aging Humvee fleet.
Designed from the get-go as an international program, Oshkosh is actively courting foreign military sales customers for JLTV. So far it has signed only the United Kingdom, but the deal is a sizeable one.
The State Department last year approved a $1 billion FMS deal for the delivery of 2,747 JLTVs to the United Kingdom, the first international sale of the new light trucks if approved by Congress. Company officials have said they have plenty of manufacturing capacity to handle the burden of international sales on top of meeting Army and Marine Corps demand.