By Ann Roosevelt
The primary goal of the Army’s plan to modernize and sustain its more than $70 billion investment in tactical wheeled vehicles (TWV) is to provide soldiers with the appropriately protected tactical vehicles for their mission, service officials said.
“This strategy will allow the Army to balance the quality, quantity and cost of its TWV fleet to meet its mission requirements and fiscal responsibilities,” wrote Lt. Gen. Robert Lennox, deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, in his introduction to the Fiscal Year 2011 Army Tactical Wheeled Vehicle Strategy.
The 23-page strategy, four years in the making, was signed Jan. 27 by Army Secretary John McHugh, is to inform requirements, acquisition, a still-to-be-published fleet management plan, and the development of future budgets. The strategy is to be valid through FY 2025.
This new TWV strategy offers a paradigm shift from past efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, director of Force Development in Army G-8, said in a briefing. “We’ve built in versatility into this strategy. We’ve accounted for changing needs and requirements in accordance with our Army modernization strategy. We’re going to procure trucks that are adaptable so they can be used in any environment, have the ability to accept armor and then relinquish that armor when it’s no longer needed or to accept new forms of armor as industry and science produce new kinds of armor we will incorporate that into our tactical wheeled vehicle fleets.”
The service said it is at a “strategic crossroads,” unable to sustain and modernize the current TWV fleet given the likely size of future budgets.
Consider: the Army has more than 290,000 tactical wheeled vehicles, more than the U.S. Postal Service, Spoehr said.
And the Army truck is no longer a simple, unprotected transport, but a protected system that has caused “dramatic increase” in truck costs. That evolution means the “Army has spent close to an average of $6 billion/year on its TWVs (not counting MRAPs) since FY ’03, as compared to less than $1 billion/year in the six preceding years,” the strategy said.
Thus, the annualized cost to replace each of the current vehicles every 40 years with a mid-life recapitalization is more than “$2 billion/year and over $2.5 billion/year if MRAPs are included,” the strategy siad. If the Army were to replace all Humvees with Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, it would add more than $2 billion to $5 billion/year to these estimates, depending on the procurement rate.
Chief of Army Transportation Brig. Gen. Edward Dorman, who works at The Army Training and Doctrine Command, is developing a long-term protection strategy for the vehicles. This means vehicles with “scalable armor and ability to grow and improve, not only for our tactical wheeled vehicles but our material handling equipment and our combat construction equipment, which also will require improved levels of protection to operate alongside our tactical wheeled vehicles fleet.”
One place where the rubber meets the road is under Program Executive Officer Combat Support and Combat Service Support Kevin Fahey.
Col. David Bassett, project manager Tactical Vehicles, in Fahey’s office, said, “Within the past few months we’ve introduced new heavy tactical vehicles built to the modular armor protection standards that are envisioned by the strategy,” he said. The new Line Haul Truck and new heavy equipment transporter (HET) A1 are all built to accept standard armor kits–B-Kits–for operational use. “Those vehicles are designed such that you can take that armor off to reduce the burden on the platform itself, as well as driving down peacetime operating costs.”
The armor-capable objective is “greater than or equal to 30 percent of the TWV fleet,” the strategy said. The service plans to accomplish that goal by having three tiers of armor protection through FY 2025 and “likely beyond.” The service would also use new procurement, recapitalization and MRAP integration to reach greater than or equal to 50 percent armor-capable for the TWV fleet.
Additionally, the Army will pursue initiatives beyond armor, such as other systems, countermeasures, training, education and doctrinal changes to improve the survivability of soldiers in the TWV fleet.
However, the risk to the whole TWV strategy is having the funding to accomplish it.