Hello all, I hope I am not repeating information from an earlier post. I have read a few lately asking about an official program, but they were always talked about as being just rumors. I just read an interesting article in the February 20th issue of Defence News that confirmed that the Army and Marines are cooperating on a replacement for the Hummer family of vehicles. It is officially called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). The article states that it is a program to develop a vehicle to replace the Hummer with one that shares 80% commonality between the Army and USMC versions. Just thought some would be interested.



Smoke

There will be a "truck rodeo" held in 2006 that will select the winner for a light, medium, and heavy tactical truck after the entrants run through the obstacle course. Domestic and foreign competitors are welcome to the contest.

As stated before, the problem I see isn't so much the best design winning, but PRODUCING the best design fast enough to replace all the older models.

Example, the U.S. Army uses the FMTV, M939, and M35, all trucks the FMTV was supposed to replace.

Meanwhile, the USMC, even though it has a smaller truck medium fleet, handed over its USMC M939s to the US Army for FREE and uses the MTVR. That's a bold move, but looks like the USMC figured they can get their MTVRs fast enough.

So the winner of the Humvee replacement had better know how to crank out light tactical trucks for BOTH the US Army and USMC...no small feat.

It might look something like this...

Shadow

Everything is up for grabs now. That Shadow may be one of the contestants.

Like the Joint Strike Fighter, all designs are off the table for the contest---just like the IBCT where the Stryker won.

Problem with these "joint contests" is that the USMC breaks away and develops its own designs after the contest anyway because the joint design may suit the Army but still doesn't satisfy all the USMC requirements and there really is no room for compromise. I mean, sometimes there really IS a reason why there is a USMC and an Army design and a compromise design just costs more money in the long run as the two services go their own separate ways (again!).

Why, the LAV-25 was a joint Army/USMC program (RDF for the Army) but the Army dropped out of it in the Cold War 1980s, thinking that the LAV was too LAV for the Army. But the LAV sure would've filled a gap between the M2 and M113/Humvee. The Army got the Stryker oooooh...20 years later with its 14.5mm AP armored skin, but to get a 25mm cannon, one still needs the M2 Bradley. . So sometimes "joint" works and sometimes "joint" doesn't.