Oshkosh Hits 10,000 JLTVs

WASHINGTON: It’s 10,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles down for Oshkosh, another 50,000-plus to go – or at least, that’s what the company hopes. But the Army’s changing plans have put the program under pressure in two ways: The service might buy fewer, and it might buy them from someone other than Oshkosh.

That’s a big reason why Oshkosh is making a big deal of the news that’s now produced 10,000 JLTVs in just five years, below the government’s original cost estimate.

Back in 2015, when Oshkosh beat out Humvee maker AM General and aerospace titan Lockheed Martin for the JLTV contract, the Army was planning to buy 50,000 of them, plus another 5,500 for the Marines – a number the Marines later raised to 9,091. That would replace some – not all – of the services’ vast fleet of Humvees, which even in uparmored versions proved dangerously vulnerable to roadside bombs. (The Pentagon urgently fielded MRAP trucks — Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected – as a stopgap in Iraq, but the heavily armored vehicles proved unequal to much off-road operation, limiting their tactical mobility).

But as the Pentagon refocused from counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq to deterring high-intensity warfare with Russia and China, Mark Espper, and Ryan McCarthy both publicly questioned whether the military needed to buy that many 4×4 trucks. Long-range missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft, and armored fighting vehicles all seemed higher priorities for the Army – and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, an Army officer himself, warned the Army budget would suffer fiscal “bloodletting” to fund air- and seapower.

Of course, Esper, McCarthy and other Trump political appointees are all now gone. So is, in all likelihood, the ambitious and expensive shipbuilding program the Trump administration pushed in its final months. That doesn’t mean the Army will avoid a budgetary bloodbath of some sort. That’s a threat facing every Army program. But there’s another threat specific to Oshkosh’s role on the JLTV. The Army owns the intellectual property required to build the vehicle – what’s called the Technical Data Package – and plans to hold an open competition to see if any other company can build the same machine more affordably than Oshkosh.

However, that competition won’t occur until 2022. Oshkosh’s original Army contract – for up to 16,901 vehicles – was supposed to last that long.

Because Oshkosh is building vehicles for less than the Army had originally budgeted, the Army ended up ordering the maximum 16,901 vehicles two years early, in fall 2020, and had to award a new $911 million order to keep the line humming through 2022.

Oshkosh’s track record of building the JLTV on time and under budget is its biggest advantage going into next years’ recompete. It’ll be tough for other companies to replicate Oshkosh’s JLTV workforce, infrastructure and supply chain, let alone convince the government they can improve on them.

“Oshkosh Defense has over a decade of proprietary experience in designing, building, and delivering the world’s most capable light tactical vehicle,” Oshkosh VP George Mansfield said in a statement. “Since the program was awarded to Oshkosh Defense in August 2015, the company has built a robust, dependable supply chain; optimized its manufacturing process and maximized efficiencies; and provided JLTVs at a contractual price substantially lower than the Government cost estimate. Today we’re celebrating building our 10,000th JLTV. We’re confident in our ability to continue to deliver unmatched protection and off-road mobility at an affordable cost for many years to come.”