RE: Improvements to Discontinued Humvees May LastImprovements to Discontinued Humvees May Last Another 20 Years
May2010
By Grace V. Jean
The darlingof the infantry, the 25-year-old humvee, increasingly is beingrelegated to sitting in motor pools inside forward operating basesbecause its flat-bottom crew compartment is vulnerable to roadsidebombs.
But with a replacement truck still years away, Army andMarine Corps officials are planning to upgrade the humvee fleet —particularly its armor protection — so it can stay in service foranother 20 years.
The ground services have tens of thousands ofhumvees that do not meet new survivability standards. The joint lighttactical vehicle is intended to replace those trucks. But the JLTVdevelopment is still in its infancy.
“It will take quite a bitof time to replace all of the humvees, so you’re going to have humveesaround for 20 years,” says Dennis Haag, product manager for lighttactical vehicles in the Army’s combat support and combat servicesupport program executive office. “What you have to do is take care ofthat fleet through the sustainment side to make sure it remains a viablepiece of equipment for soldiers.”
One option is to upgrade thehumvee with the latest blast-resistant technologies. Officials have beenunhappy with bolt-on armor kits because they weigh down the trucks.Alternatives to bolt-on armor have been developed. The Marine Corps hashoned in on a V-shaped hull capsule concept that is being evaluated atAberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
The Army owns 150,000 humvees madeby AM General, headquartered in South Bend, Ind. About a third are newerup-armored trucks. Another third are unarmored utility vehicles thatalready have been through a recapitalization program at the Army’sdepots. The final third are vehicles that have surpassed the 15-year“economic useful life” threshold.
The service by 2011 will ceaseto buy new humvees, says Haag. The Army instead is gearing up for acompetitive recapitalization program to fix 60,000 war-torn vehicles.
Officialsearlier this year asked for industry input about systems that couldimprove the humvee’s protection, mobility and payload. Haag says hisoffice has been receiving so many responses that the deadline wasextended to give the Army time to provide feedback and to continuecollecting information.
The service intends to release a formalrequest for proposals this spring. “We are looking to award the first ofwhat will be two awards for prototyping prior to the end of this fiscalyear,” Army Col. David Bassett, project manager for tactical vehiclesin the service’s combat support and combat service support programexecutive office, tells National Defense.
The winning bidderswill provide prototypes for blast testing and other evaluations.“Spending some money on some prototypes and really understanding whatcan be done is a great way to burn down that risk on what willinevitably be billion-dollar decisions,” he says.
Officials wouldlike to see bidders leverage government depots for the recap and proposeways to lighten the vehicles.
“Reduced weight in and of itselfwill reduce energy consumption,” says Bassett in response to a questionabout whether energy will play a role in the requirements.
Haagadds, “We would obviously look for any type of energy improvements thatcould be rolled into it.”
The winning prototype must be capableof quickly transitioning into production.
Bassett says the goalis to offer the Army alternatives — recapping humvees to an enhancedconfiguration, continuing to recap in the current configuration, orpossibly shifting the investment toward JLTV.
In the fiscal year2011 contingency operations budget, the Army has requested $989 millionfor a humvee recapitalization.
“We do not anticipate that acompetitive contract can be awarded in time to use those FY11 dollars,”says Bassett. The contracts to be awarded in the near term would be formuch smaller amounts, he adds.
A January Defense Departmentinspector general report recommended that the Army consider one specifichumvee configuration, the XM1166, in its recap efforts.
“Ithink this competitive recap is absolutely consistent with thoserecommendations,” says Bassett. The program will include the live-firetesting recommended by the IG, and it will allow the Army to considersystems including the 1166 and any other capable solutions.
Companiesthat currently produce the mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP)vehicles are expected to bid for the humvee upgrade program, officialssay. The V-shaped monocoque hulls on those trucks are designed towithstand roadside bomb blasts and deflect shrapnel away from vehicleoccupants.
“We’re hoping that those same vendors and others takethose lessons learned and make them part of their proposals on thisrecap effort,” says Bassett.
Granite Tactical Vehicles based inMount Airy, N.C., has developed a small combat tactical vehicle capsuleconcept for the humvee.
“We’ve basically taken the MRAPsurvivability concepts down to the humvee level,” says Granite’spresident, Chris Berman, a retired Navy SEAL. The V-shapedcapsule places a strong emphasis on underbelly protection, says Berman.He says the capsule reduces the threat of fire inside the cabin byisolating the fuel cell from the crew compartment through an armoreddriveline tunnel. A protective shield below that prevents contact withthe fuel tank in the event of a blast. The capsule also contains a firesuppression system. Unlike the aluminum body of current humvees,the welded steel monocoque capsule will not be crushed in a rollover,Berman says. Batteries have been removed completely from the crewcompartment and placed into the vehicle’s rear exterior. Engineers alsocreated pliers-accessible release points on the hull to allow for easiercrew extraction during emergency evacuations.
Compared to thecost of a new M1151 up-armored humvee with a fragmentation kit, thecapsule is lower in price, he says.
Armoring existing humveesrequires many parts and a labor-intensive process to integrate them. Onthe capsule, however, the parts are welded into a single shell and thedesign utilizes many existing humvee components, including gas and brakepedals, gear shifters and motors.
Granite teamed with TextronMarine and Land Systems to bid on the humvee upgrade program. Thecompany has delivered three hulls to the Marine Corps WarfightingLaboratory for testing.
The lab last month commenced trials on atilt-table and driving the hulls on a variety of tracks at U.S. ArmyAberdeen Test Center, says Marine Corps Maj. Scot Jaworski, branch headof the ground combat element at the lab’s technology division. Becausethe capsule incorporates a lift into its design, lab officials arepaying close attention to the handling.
“We’re fairly confidentit’s not going to affect its drivability much because the addedunderbelly armor actually brings down the center of gravity slightly,”says Jaworski. “We’re pretty sure it’s going to handle similarly to an[expanded-capacity] humvee, but time on the track is really going totell us that,” he says in an interview at Quantico, Va.
Officialsalso are keeping a close watch on the drive train temperature becauseit is enclosed within the capsule and could overheat. “It would be badif the vehicle drives great, protects great, but blows out differentialsbecause of overheating 20 miles into it. We would like that not tohappen,” Jaworski says.
The lab previously ran experiments withanother V-shaped underbody, and it didn’t work out well at all, he adds.
“Thisvehicle, if successful, will be a leaps-and-bounds improvement to thecurrent humvee,” says Jaworski. Last fall, it successfully completedblasting trials at Aberdeen.
Col. Bob Danko, director of thelogistics integration division within Marine Corps Combat DevelopmentCommand’s capabilities development directorate, says it is premature todraw any conclusions. “We want to see the test results and develop apath forward if everything turns out to be positive.”
The lab’sfinal report is expected by the end of the month. “We would lovethis thing to be a solution to our light fleet problem, and we wouldlove it to be a bridge capability to JLTV,” says Danko. The Marine Corpshas a requirement for 25,000 humvees through 2020, and like the Army,it must sustain that fleet for an additional 10 to 15 years until JLTVcomes online and supplants the truck. While the Marine Corps remainscommitted to purchasing 5,500 JLTVs, top officials have expresseddissatisfaction with the replacement truck’s weight and cost estimates.
Dankocompares the capsule effort to one that the Marine Corps accomplishedwhile improving the mobility of MRAPs for Afghanistan. The MRAP vehiclewas not fit for the rough terrain in Southwest Asia. Industry developedan all-terrain variant, but Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conwaychose to buy upgraded suspensions for the MRAPs that they already had.
“Itwas a heck of a lot cheaper to put new suspensions on a lot of ourMRAPs than it was to buy a bunch more of the M-ATVs at $430,000 a pop,”says Danko.
The capsule concept could follow suit.
“We’relooking at this potential solution as costing less than $100,000 acopy. We think that might be a good deal,” says Danko.
Thecapsule concept retains the physical characteristics of the currenthumvee. “The transportability issue is huge for us. To be able to haveabout the same weight of a humvee and to have this capsule on therewould be awesome,” says Danko.
“If I’ve got 30 humvees on anamphibious ship, I can probably get 30 of these on an amphib too,” saysJaworski.
If the test results are positive, the earliest theMarine Corps could put money behind a recap effort would be in fiscalyear 2014, says Danko. But if commanders in Afghanistan demanded fasterresults, the Corps could potentially speed up the process and haveinitial vehicles driving off the production line as early as next year,he adds.
Though the capsule has been tested on a number ofhumvee frames, the Corps would probably have to place it on the newerexpanded-capacity vehicles because they already have the upgradedsuspensions, transmissions and other advanced components. “We would wantthe capsule to be on our most capable vehicles,” says Danko.
TheArmy is keeping tabs on the trials. “We think that the work that theMarine Corps has done with the capsule concept is absolutely consistentwith where we intend to take the competitive recap program,” saysBassett, the Army’s tactical vehicles project manager. “We’re encouragedby those kind of developments because it helps inform our understandingof what’s possible on these vehicles.”
Danko says, “Hopefullyat the end of the day, both the Army and Marine Corps will go down thesame line for a potential solution.”