Axed Army Vehicle Programs Leave Unanswered Questions

Air Force photo

The Army is moving on from both its battle-worn High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle — better known as the Humvee — and the program intended to replace it, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. The decision has been met with varying degrees of surprise and uncertainty from those left in its dust.

The Army’s decision to end the programs was teased in a memo released April 30 by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called “Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform,” directing “comprehensive transformation” within the Army to “streamline its force structure, eliminate wasteful spending” and “modernize inefficient defense contracts.”

The memo listed the Humvee as an example of a “wasteful” program that is “outdated” and “obsolete,” declaring that the Army would end procurement of “excess ground vehicles.”

A more pointed nail in the coffin came in a letter the following day from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, specifically naming both the Humvee and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV. The letter labeled both as “excess ground vehicles” of which the service will cancel procurement.

The aging Humvee’s days were already numbered, but the cancellation of the JLTV — a joint program with the Marine Corps — was relatively surprising, with the vehicle having achieved initial operating capability in 2019. AM General — which won the program’s recompete contract in 2023 over its original manufacturer Oshkosh Defense — was planning to begin delivery of its new JLTV A2 models for testing the week the cancellation was announced.

Both programs are casualties of a Defense Department-wide pivot to operations in the Indo-Pacific, with less need for ground vehicles as the focus shifts to maritime operations. Hegseth’s memo stated that the service is prioritizing “defending our homeland and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Mark Cancian, senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ defense and security department, called the decision a “mild surprise.”

“The reason I say ‘mild surprise’ is that there’s been an expectation for a long time that a pivot to the Pacific is going to cut back on Army programs focused on land warfare, and the Trump administration was clearly accelerating that,” Cancian said in an interview.

“JLTV — was that one of the ones that was on the top of people’s list? Probably not, … but it makes sense.” If the focus is on the Indo-Pacific, “and you want to cut back on the Army and de-emphasize ground, land warfare, yeah, this would be one of the programs that you curtail,” he said.

Neither document addressed details of how the effort to “eliminate waste and obsolete programs” will play out, but both industry and Congress are working to understand the decision’s ramifications.

The JLTV was meant to partially replace the Cold War-era Humvee. It was designed to provide increased crew protection against weaknesses found in the Humvee, such as improvised explosive devices and underbody attacks.

Oshkosh Defense won a $6.7 billion low-rate initial production contract in 2015 to deliver the initial 16,901 vehicles for the Army and the Marine Corps, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in May.

Marine Corps units received their first vehicles in February 2019, and the Army began fielding JLTVs to units in April 2019.

In February 2023, AM General won the recompete contract, which was valued at more than $8 billion, the CRS report stated. The five-year contract called for the company to produce up to 20,682 JLTVs and up to 9,883 trailers.

What happens to those numbers following the Army’s decision?

Oshkosh Defense said in an email response to National Defense that this is not the first time the Army has moved on from the company, referencing the recompete contract it lost to AM General. The response suggested a “we were fine then and we’ll be fine now” mentality, in part due to international customers not affected by the Defense Department memo.

Oshkosh has completed production of all JLTVs under contract with the Army and Marine Corps “and will continue to deliver completed vehicles through the fiscal year,” the company stated.

“We take pride in having delivered over 23,000 JLTVs since initial contract award in 2015,” Pat Williams, chief programs officer at Oshkosh Defense, said in the email. “Following the U.S. government’s decision to transition future JLTV production to another manufacturer, Oshkosh has continued to market and sell [JLTVs] to international partners and allied nations through direct commercial sales.”

Williams said the Army’s recent decision “does not alter our international growth plans and commitment to expanding Oshkosh Defense JLTV presence globally,” and the company “remains committed to supporting our partners in the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps as we navigate these changes together.”

AM General — who also builds the Humvee — denied a request from National Defense for an interview, saying in an email response that the company is not commenting publicly beyond a corporate statement released May 2, which said the company currently has a delivery backlog through 2027 and remains committed to meeting contractual delivery requirements.

“As we work to understand the significance of the DoD’s recent communications, we will continue to operate our Humvee and JLTV A2 assembly lines and our Aftermarket Fulfillment facility as normal to meet our contractual requirements and serve the warfighter,” it said.

The Army did not respond to requests for an interview, but the service’s Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus told reporters following the decision that the Army has “bought enough” JLTVs and “will do no further procurement buys” beyond the latest tranche of 250 vehicles that was delivered in January.

Mingus also told the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee May 6 that the Humvee and JLTV “will not go away overnight,” but rather the divestment will occur “over time.”

More JLTVs are still scheduled to come off the production line, and by ceasing further procurement, the Army plans to reinvest funds to more rapidly modernize light formations, he said.

Industry will likely not see those reinvested funds, however, Cancian said.

“It’s frustrating for industry, just because they geared up and they thought they were going to have another five years or so of orders, and now those have been cut by two-thirds, but that’s the nature of the thing,” he said.

The JLTV program’s cancellation has also raised questions about the gap it could create in soldier protection.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., asked Driscoll and George during a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing May 7 how the service plans to ensure soldier protection in the field in the absence of vehicles like the JLTV.

George said that a mixture of solutions to include autonomous systems and the Infantry Squad Vehicle within the Army’s Mobile Brigade Combat Teams — a new type of unit the Army is experimenting with designed to be lighter and more mobile — will provide soldiers necessary protection.

“Every situation is going to be a little bit different” as far as how much protection is required, he said, noting that both ground and air autonomous systems can be “put into contact first” and “can do breaching, change detection that you can see as far as the earth is being changed.”

George likened vehicles like the JLTV to “putting yourself in a complete shell,” and “the problem with some of those vehicles, too, is they’re not very mobile. They get stuck. When you get stuck, you’re also a target. So, I think it’s a mix, and that’s what we’re looking at inside our formations.”

Driscoll added that the Army does not know what the correct balance of protection and speed is. The service over the last 20 years has “purchased or over-purchased a lot of equipment that now needs to be balanced out with new, more digital, faster things. And so, our purchasing may look like it’s a binary, ‘we’re going towards only faster,’ but we know that we already have a lot of this other equipment in our arsenal.”

Cancian said the Army is accepting some risk in discontinuing the JLTV and Humvee by weakening the base of an armored vehicle pyramid — but it’s a weakness it can afford right now.

Eliminating the vehicles “means that they’re going to be in … less armored vehicles” — and for many kinds of operations, that’s not a problem, he said. “In insurgencies, it’s a huge problem,” but “we’re not preparing for insurgencies.”

The JLTV still has work to do for the Marine Corps, however.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee May 14 that the service is “fully committed” to the JLTV. But the Army’s decision — which ranking member Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., noted “came as much as a surprise to [Smith] as it did to this committee” — has left the Marine Corps with some negative side effects.

“The average per unit cost is going to go up when the orders go down,” Smith said. “And that’s going to negatively impact the Marine Corps’ ability to fulfill its ground tactical vehicle mobility strategy, which has me concerned.”

He called the JLTV the “workhorse” of the Marine Corps’ ground tactical vehicle fleet, relied upon by programs such as its Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires and the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System.

Cancian said the JLTV is the Marine Corps’ stand-in for a tracked armored vehicle, “so I think the Marine Corps will continue” procuring the system.

As the dust settles from the Army’s decision, Cancian said one thing is clear: the Army is “under a lot of pressure” budget-wise and strategically, “and I think this is one element of that.”

“The administration is much more focused on the Pacific in a conflict with China. They want the Army to acquire those capabilities,” and JLTVs “aren’t those capabilities, and they already have a bunch,” he said.

 

Topics: Army News, Combat Vehicles, Defense Department