JLTV

Marines: Sequester, CR Would Ground F-18s, Slash Pilot Training; ‘Very Real Risk Of Killing Pilots’

By

WASHINGTON: As the government hurtles towards the latest fiscal cliff, March 1st, the Marine Corps‘ deputy commandant for resources outlined a host of painful potential consequences, from reduced rifle training to cancelled deployments to grounded fighter squadrons. Lt. Gen. John Wissler appealed to Congress for so-called reprogramming authority that would at least let the Marines move around the money they do have to mitigate the worst effects.

[Click here to read about the readiness problems for the Army, Air Force, and Navy]

“Our money’s just in the wrong places in some instances,” Wissler told reporters after his speech this morning to the Navy League. But they can’t move it without explicit permission from Congress, he explained: “What we would need is to move things between appropriations, and they would need to help us there.” Keep reading →

Published February 12, 2013 at 12:30 PM

Humvee Maker AM General Plays Underdog In JLTV Battle

By

AM General’s corporate ancestors built jeeps in World War II. The company designed and still builds the military’s iconic Humvee. But in the battle to build the Humvee’s replacement, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, AM General is ironically not the incumbent but the scrappy underdog.

[Follow these links to read more and see video about AM General's competitors, Lockheed Martin and Oshkosh, and read about the JLTV competition overall]. Keep reading →

Published November 19, 2012 at 12:15 PM

Tighten Your Belts Thru 2020, Says Gen. Amos; ‘I’m Already Taking Risks’

By

WASHINGTON: The military is in for another eight years of tight budgets, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos predicted today. The good news is that the relationship between the four Joint Chiefs who craft their budgets and their chairman is “better than it ever has been.”

In his public remarks, the commandant hammered home the point that the Joint Chiefs are confronting austerity shoulder-to-shoulder, without the usual interservice sniping over budget shares and that there is no daylight in particular between the two land forces, Army and the Marines. Keep reading →

Published November 8, 2012 at 12:45 PM

Lockheed Plays Against Type, Offers High Tech, Low Cost JLTV

By

AUSA: Last month’s Association of the US Army conference in Washington was a chance for contractors to show off their biggest programs, and they don’t get much bigger than the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a $15 billion-plus program to replace the Humvee.

But for one of the three companies competing to build the JLTV, the program is in fact relatively small. That would be Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, best known for high-tech and high-cost programs like spy satellites, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Lockheed does work on some ground vehicles, and its JLTV partner BAE builds even more, but they’re hardly central to Lockheed’s business. Keep reading →

Published October 31, 2012 at 1:10 PM

Army Modernizes, Modestly: Hard Upgrades To M1s, MRAPs, Humvees

By

AUSA: It may sound ambitious, even hubristic, that the Army wants to fold all its modernization programs into a single 30-year plan. But the long-range look is all about living within limits.

The service wants to keep researching and developing 21st century weapons like the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) truck and the tank-like Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), but it is also knows it must keep 1980s designs like the Humvee and the M1 Abrams tank for years to come. This sets up a nasty cycle. The more the new stuff gets cut, the longer the old stuff has to last, which requires careful investment in maintenance and upgrades. Keep reading →

Published October 25, 2012 at 8:00 AM

The Great MRAP Debate: Are Blast-Resistant Vehicles Worth It?

By

The bomb exploded like a dusty thunderclap directly underneath the front left tire of the U.S. Army MaxxPro truck, sending the tall, roughly 20-ton vehicle lurching at least 10 feet forward and scattering chunks of the outer hull like amputated body parts.

It was March 19, 2011, in the Pakhab-e-Shana in eastern Afghanistan’s breadbasket Logar Province. The bomb, later estimated at 250 pounds, had targeted a convoy belonging to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division carrying humanitarian aid to the impoverished village. Keep reading →

Published October 1, 2012 at 3:30 PM

Marines, Navy March Into ‘Fiscal Valley Forge’

By

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: As budgets tighten, the Navy and Marine Corps are looking at a host of ways to save, from installing LED lights on ships to slowing vehicle purchases to centralizing power on the Chief of Naval Operations’ staff.

“We are entering a fiscal Valley Forge, a time of austerity,” said Ariane Whittemore, the Marine Corps’s assistant deputy commandant for resources. Her analogy invoked George Washington’s brutal winter of 1777-1778, when the starving Continental Army lost a quarter of its men but emerged a leaner, harder force. Keep reading →

Published September 12, 2012 at 5:00 AM

Navistar Pulls JLTV Protest

By

[UPDATED 12:45 pm] Truck maker Navistar is withdrawing the protest it filed Friday with the Government Accountability Office over the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, company spokeswoman Elissa Koc told Breaking Defense this morning.

Had Navistar persisted, its protest probably would have delayed JLTV development for months while the GAO investigated whether the military ran the competition fairly. Keep reading →

Published September 4, 2012 at 11:55 AM

Navistar Files JLTV Protest; Humvee Replacement Will Probably Top $15.5B

By


UPDATED: Navistar has withdrawn its protest — click here for the latest.

Buy 54,599 armored trucks at $250,000 each and that works out to roughly $13.6 billion. Keep reading →

Published August 31, 2012 at 1:30 PM

JLTV Strategies Compared: Lockheed vs. Oshkosh vs. AM General

By


Three very different teams are contending to build the Humvee’s replacement, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Breaking Defense weighs their strengths and weaknesses.

Last week, the Army and Marines slashed a crowded field of competitors in half, awarding contracts for “engineering and manufacturing development” of JLTV prototypes to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, truck maker Oshkosh, and Humvee manufacturer AM General. The choices surprised many observers because only one of the three, Lockheed, had won in the previous round, in 2008, when the military awarded three “technology development” contracts. A major restructuring of the program last year had rendered many of the original criteria irrelevant, because — facing a cancellation threat from the Senate Appropriations Committee — the Army and Marines had trimmed back their ambitions for the new vehicle to contain spiralling costs. Keep reading →

Published August 27, 2012 at 4:15 PM
Page 1 of 3123