By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps faces a “dilemma” as it weighs what vehicles to use until industry develops a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) that is suitable for the expeditionary service, a top officer said yesterday.
Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos told House lawmakers his service remains displeased with test versions of the JLTV–a planned replacement to the Humvee truck- -that have been developed thus far for the Marine Corps and Army.
Three companies are under contract to build competing JLTV prototypes: BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT], and a General Dynamics [GD]-AM General joint venture called General Tactical Vehicles.
“It’s not here yet; there are some issues with it,” Amos said about the JLTV, while testifying before three subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee.
Amos acknowledged Army and Marine Corps leaders gave the defense industry a tough task in developing a JLTV. Companies were asked to “push technology,” he said, and build a vehicle that is light enough for the Marine Corps to lift it with a helicopter but also has protection from roadside explosives akin to that provided by the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP), with its blast-deflecting V-shaped hull.
“We were hoping that ceramic armor…(and) a whole host of things were going to develop and give us this little capsule kind of vehicle that had high mobility and high protection; it’s not there yet,” Amos said.
The JLTV, thus far, doesn’t provide the desired level of explosive safety and is not light enough for the Marine Corps, he said.
“You’re talking vehicles that are 23,000, 24,000 pounds; that’s not what the Marine Corps is interested in,” he said. “We can’t put that on ships….So that’s why we’re struggling with this Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.”
Thus, Amos said, Marine Corps leaders “find ourselves now with a little bit of a gap.”
“We have a dilemma within the Marine Corps, and it’s near-term, about what are we going to do,” he said. “Are we going to just continue to recapitalize and reset with more Humveees, or are we going to try to find an interim vehicle that has a V-shaped hull that might not be a JLTV yet, because it’s not developed, but we hope to get there someday? That’s what we’re struggling with right now and we’re working through that.”
The Marine Corps is looking at an alternative capsule-like, V-hulled vehicle that, he said, “fits on top of a Humvee frame” and is “manufactured by an outfit down in North Carolina.”
The service, meanwhile, is trying to “zero in on the bull’s-eye on just what that balance of ground-mobility equipment should look like,” Amos said.
He said he plans to sit down with Lt. Gen. George Flynn, commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC), a position Amos previously held, early next year to discuss the “entire landscape of what the ground-tactical-vehicle strategy will look like in the Marine Corps.”
There is “no question” the up-armored Humvee will be a “staple item” in the corps, Amos said. Still, he said the service would “like to get away from flat-bottomed vehicles.”
He noted that the service only decided in the past half year that the MRAP is going to be part of the total ground-tactical-vehicle strategy.
“There was a period of time where we thought it was too big, it was too heavy for us and it just didn’t fit our expeditionary kind of flavor,” he said. “(But) we’ve kind of come full circle right now. So our anticipation is that we are going to have 2,346 of these rascals that are going to become part of our regular inventory.”
Force Protection [FRPT] built most of the Marine Corps’ MRAPs.
Amos also noted that the Marine Corps’ need for money to buy and reset equipment has grown by billions of dollars since he testified before the House panels in July. He blamed the United States’ extended time in combat and deployments to Afghanistan, which he said has a “a harsher environment by a factor of probably three or four, with the mountains and deserts spread out,” compared to Iraq.