By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps’ top weapons planner said his service’s delayed ground-vehicle strategy still remains a “work in progress” influenced by experiments with Humvee enhancements and development of a replacement vehicle.
The strategy document is expected to lay out the service’s future plans for vehicles of varied weights including the existing Humvee and Light Armored Vehicle and future Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) (Defense Daily, June 24).
While the plan has not been unveiled yet, Lt. Gen. George Flynn, head of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, said this fall the service will cut 10,000 of its 42,000 tactical vehicles.
Flynn, who is also the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told reporters yesterday that balancing weight, transportability, and mobility of the vehicles remains a challenge. And the affordability of ground vehicles, and their “exponential cost increases,” is what keeps him up at night, he said.
While a Humvee in the 1990s cost $50,000 to $60,000, he said, replacements currently are estimated to cost up to $400,000.
“When we talk about the ground-tactical-vehicle strategy, that’s why I’m trying to look at recapitalization and new buy,” Flynn said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “How can I take advantage of what I’ve already bought, apply new technology and avoid some of the cost at least for the short term to be able to afford a longer buy.”
Marine Corps leaders have questioned its future use of the JLTV, a developmental Humvee replacement for the Army and Marine Corps, because of concerns that those developed thus far by industry are too heavy.
Three contractor teams built prototypes for the JLTV’s current technology-development phase: the General Tactical Vehicles (GTV) team of General Dynamics [GD] and AM General; BAE Systems-Navistar Defense LLC, an affiliate of Navistar International Corp. [NAV]; and Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE.
The JLTV’s engineering and manufacturing development phase will begin next fall if Pentagon officials give the program approval to proceed.
Flynn said the Marine Corps continues to examine the three JLTV prototypes as it struggles to find a vehicle that can protect passengers from explosions but still be agile and easy to transport.
“Modularity could be important to us in the future, being able to up-armor, un-armor, how to do it,” he said, because “right now protection is heavy.”
“I keep asking the scientists…’Is there going to be a breakthrough any time in the near future that’s going to allow you to lighten the load,'” he said. “And I’m not getting anything for five to 10 years, is what the scientists are saying.”
That’s why, he said, now “the focus has been on design” of two types of enhancements to existing Humvees.
One Humvee improvement idea is an integrated protection system with “chimney technology” that he said can “mitigate the blast through actually a chimney that’s integrated into the vehicle.”
“Think of the blast seeking an outlet, accelerating through the chimney, you don’t have the rapid acceleration of the vehicle,” he said. “And the rapid acceleration is what causes the extremity injuries and the core body injuries.”
The other upgrade, he said, is one service officials have talked about for the past year, to build a capsule that provides added armor protection and could be affixed to a Humvee frame. The capsule raises the vehicle, provides underbelly protection from blasts, and encapsulates the drive train.
The Marine Corps is testing a vehicle with such a capsule at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona to see what kind of mobility it has and how the frame holds up, Flynn said.
“Think of Nascar,” he said. “Think of the car that crashes in the wall. You see the crash, the flames, and when everything’s said and done you have…no more mobility, but the driver survives.”
“So we can mitigate that without adding weight?” he added. “I’m starting to get there.”
Right now, he said his preferred plan would be to recapitalize some of the Marine Corps’ 20,000 Humvees and buy new vehicles through a “program like the JLTV.” The service currently plans to buy approximately 5,500 JLTVs.
For the future Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC), a future medium-weight vehicle that has been delayed, Flynn said the service is looking at the “art of the possible.” An MPC industry day was held yesterday near the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.
Flynn did not talk at length about the EFV, General Dynamics’ long-delayed tracked amphibious vehicle that observers speculate may be canceled.
Flynn, the Marine Corps’ top requirements setter, said the service has a requirement for the EFV that stands. The Pentagon recertified the vehicle effort to Congress three years ago, saying it is vital despite a cost breach.
“We have not done anything since then that tells me if there is anything else out there,” Flynn said.