Army Tries Out Humvee-Mounted Howitzer

WASHINGTON: The Army is checking out two sizes of a unique low-recoil howitzer system: a 155mm gun on a 6×6 truck, Brutus, and a 105mm on a 4×4 Humvee, Hawkeye. That’s an extraordinarily small vehicle to mount an artillery piece, and reducing recoil is the key to making it work.

The “soft recoil” system was developed by Mandus Group and integrated on vehicles by Humvee manufacturer AM General. By shifting the howitzer barrel forward and installing better hydraulics, the system reduces the recoil – depending on the elevation and range of the shot – anywhere from 40 to 60 percent, AM General CEO Andy Hove told me.

If you cut the recoil in half, the whole artillery system need be only half as heavy to absorb the stock, Hove went on. “You can save a tremendous amount of weight,” he said, which translates into a cheaper, lighter vehicle, with lower fuel and maintenance costs, that’s easier to deploy abroad and sustain in the field.

“Just on the gun itself, the soft recoil system has fewer operating parts that need to be maintained than the current recoil system,” he told me – and they’re under much less strain, so they’ll break down less.

The soft-recoil system scales up and down, so there are actually two versions.

The 155mm model, called Brutus, was touted as a contender for the Army’s new wheeled howitzer, meant to accompany highly mobile 8×8 Stryker vehicles into battle. Currently, Stryker units rely on towed 155s, which are much less mobile and take much more time to set up than self-propelled versions. The Army’s currently conducting an informal “shoot off” of four alternative wheeled howitzers; the reported contenders are American (AM General’s Brutus), Israeli (Elbit’s Iron Saber), Swedish (BAE’s Archer), and even Serbian (Yugoimport’s NORA).

The 105mm model, called Hawkeye, would presumably accompany light infantry units, which mostly move on foot and have a handful of vehicles, including trucks to tow artillery. When the company first rolled Hawkeye out in 2016, it emphasized the international market, because the US wasn’t pursuing such a vehicle. But this morning, AM General announced that it “recently received a Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) contract from the United States Army to provide two HUMVEE 2-CT Hawkeye Mobile Howitzer Systems (MHS)  for the U.S. Army’s characterization test.”

“Characterization” is a relatively informal form of testing, and it certainly comes with no commitment to buy – but it shows Hawkeye has a foot in the door.