With a smoother ride, roomier and more comfortable cab, and performance that is off the charts, the latest generation of Army trucks has moved well beyond the traditional role of tactical wheeled vehicles and into the realm of what can only be seen as “muscle trucks.”A classic example can be found in the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), which was developed under an Army-led joint acquisition with the U.S. Marine Corps. Following a successful Defense Acquisition Board and subsequent approval by the defense acquisition executive, the U.S. Army awarded Oshkosh Corp. a firm-fixed-price production contract for the JLTV in late August 2015.Scott Davis, U.S. Army program executive officer for combat support and combat service support, said current light tactical fleet capabilities mean combat commanders “often have to choose between payload, performance and protection.”“It is often said that in terms of the JLTV, there were no significantly stretching technologies,” he said, “but the magic was in balancing those three things to come up with an optimal solution.”Davis also said JLTV will provide protection similar to the MATV, or MRAP all-terrain vehicle, but at about 2/3 the weight. The protection will be substantially greater than that of the Humvee, he said.One design element that separates U.S. Army muscle trucks from most other wheeled vehicles involves the need for armor protection.“It’s amazing what we learned from 14 years of war,” said Kevin Fahey, who recently retired as director of the assistant secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) System of Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate, following earlier service as program executive officer for combat support and combat service support.“The survivability we can give to a tactical wheeled vehicle now would have been unheard of 15 years ago,” Fahey said. “The things we learned about shaping, space, how you strap people in seats, resulted in a ‘4X’ increase in survivability for MRAPs.”The JLTV family of vehicles is comprised of two-seat and four-seat variants as well as a companion trailer (JLTV-T). The two-seat variant has one base vehicle platform, the Utility (JLTV-UTL). The four-seat variant has two base vehicle platforms: the General Purpose (JLTV-GP) and the Close Combat Weapons Carrier (JLTV-CCWC).The Army anticipates the acquisition of 49,099 new platforms, with the Marine Corps set to acquire 5,500. The late August contract award will provide the first 16,901 vehicles toward those totals.Oshkosh won the contract for the initial production order over AM General and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed appealed to the Government Accountability Office, putting a temporary freeze on the program that was lifted Dec. 15. Lockheed has now sued. The Army has given Oshkosh the go-ahead to begin work and has until Feb. 16 to respond to the suit.The new JLTVs will replace a slice of the Army’s current Hum-vee fleet that—well, let’s face it: There’s nothing in the Kelley Blue Book that talks about a vehicle that’s been up-armored, shot at and seriously overburdened while being driven across some of the toughest terrain on the planet. So whether the Army drives, tows or pushes that trade-in fleet slice into the dealer, the anticipation is definitely focused on signing a DD250 Material Inspection and Receiving Report and driving the new ride off the lot.“JLTV is probably one of the best acquisition programs, where it went through a real program of record, that we have ever managed,” Fahey said. A lot of the success was because of partnerships with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command “on things like cost, schedule and performance tradeoff analysis. And there’s no doubt that when everything is resolved with JLTV, the Army will get a great truck.”When soldiers do finally get into their truck, they will notice lots of differences from the old ride. To begin with, the Oshkosh TAK-4i intelligent independent suspension system, incorporated with 20 inches of usable wheel travel, will provide unprecedented levels of off-road performance across the world’s toughest terrains.The new ride is speedy, too, with the manufacturer pointing to “70 percent faster off-road speeds” than Army tactical wheeled vehicles like Oshkosh’s own MATV.JLTV’s digitally controlled engine provides an optimized engine power-to-weight ratio with superior acceleration, mobility and “speed on grade” capabilities, as well as improved fuel economy in both idle and operational modes.When it does come time to stop, a high-performance disc brake solution provides exceptional stopping and grade-holding capabilities. And when it’s time to put the vehicle onto a longer-range transport platform, interior controls enable an adaptable suspension to be raised and lowered to meet those transportability requirements.Soldiers shouldn’t complain about a bumpy ride, either. Floating seat designs are not only comfortable but, combined with restraints and a stowage system, help save lives and protect soldiers against injuries in case of accidents or other incidents.___________________________________________________________________________Retired Colonel Was Expert on Armoring TrucksWhile advances in tactical wheeled vehicle armoring have accelerated during the past 15 years, they were actually built on a foundation of more than three decades of experience. And when it comes to armoring Army trucks, few individuals have the rich background knowledge and experience that were possessed by retired Army Col. John Stoddart. He spoke with ARMY magazine on the topic shortly before he died in December.Long before Stoddart served as a former U.S. Army program manager for heavy tactical vehicles and program executive officer for tactical wheeled vehicles, he developed a personal history with U.S. Army truck armoring that traces to the command of a company that ran convoys from Da Nang up to what was then Vietnam’s Demilitarized Zone.“What you had back then was a ‘thin-skinned’ vehicle,” he said. “The Viet Cong would put out a mine, which was a precursor to a ground attack. So the guys started making what they called ‘gun trucks.’ But the Army came back and said, ‘No, we’re not armoring wheeled vehicles. We’re going to keep trucks as payload carriers, not to fight. And the more you put on them, the better.’”Stoddart pointed to several major Army systems that were in development around that time, including the Apache helicopter, Bradley fighting vehicle, Humvee and the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT). “The Hum-vee and HEMTT gained prominence due to the fact that the logistical burden they had to carry was significant,” Stoddart said. “But they still had canvas for protection.”Citing the contributions of influential vehicle designers and testers during that period, Stoddart identified a renewed interest in both armoring and equipping the platforms with more rugged tires “to give them a capability to go places where they couldn’t go before.”“That was during the early ’80s, and we started getting feedback from around the world that people were taking out trucks very easily,” he said. One result was that he led a team to El Salvador in his role as commander of the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant. Stoddart and his team helped to armor a 5/4 ton truck.“We took that truck down and tried to turn it into a quasi-fighting vehicle,” he said. “The problem was that they really weren’t engineers. They just put a bunch of iron on there to stop them from shooting through. Great intentions, but it’s not that easy.”Stoddart said some in the Army expressed interest in armoring Humvees, “but no good deed goes unpunished. … You can’t put weight on a vehicle without paying a penalty.” The net result was a return to the philosophy of trucks as cargo carriers.“That’s good until the fight breaks out,” he said. “And either you can’t go or you add armor, and you are suddenly destroying your vehicles.”Once again, folks started with the best intentions, Stoddart said. However, “they were doing the same darn things—just sticking more metal on it.”He described the “rock and a hard place” situation as “the genesis for the move into MRAP vehicles, because we then started running into an enemy whose mines were not a precursor to the fight. Instead, the mines were the fight.”“But it all evolved to [what] we have today,” Stoddart said, “which are effective logistics vehicles [that are] very effective at protecting the soldier.”___________________________________________________________________________Vehicle survivability is like an onion, however, and the enemy has to get through several layers before the seats even come into play. The outer layer of the onion is the previously cited mobility that means JLTVs will have the performance to avoid high-threat situations in the first place. Then, if there is an attack, the JLTV features an advanced hull design to protect against both blast and ballistic effects.Several Protective LayersPeel off those outer layers and you get to the survivable seat designs—and more. The entire integrated system is designed to absorb and deflect blast energy. There are also automatic fire-suppression systems.JLTV has a new integrated electronic digital backplane as part of its original design. “The only truck today that has a digital backplane in it is MRAP and … it didn’t come that way,” Fahey said, adding that it was made part of the engineering change proposal package and completed “over time because we knew it had to carry the network when we were doing Capability Set 13.”“But JLTV is basically the first ground vehicle to be VICTORY compliant,” he said. VICTORY is an acronym for vehicular integration for command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/electronic warfare interoperability.“We put chat standard in the previous” engineering and manufacturing development phase, he said, “and we will update it consistent with the VICTORY standard being upgraded.”JLTV’s VICTORY-compliant backbone is “integration-ready” for a wide range of warfare, including subsystems and capabilities such as weapon systems, exportable power, IED defeat devices, enhanced situational awareness and improved navigation. Moreover, forget simple backup cameras. Think about expanded options for backup, forward and side cameras, and shot detectors.In addition to providing warfighters with the perfect muscle truck for an uncertain world, the success of JLTV may pave the way for the Army’s next generation of truck models.“The next trucks that will be targeted for modernization will be the medium and heavy” tactical wheeled vehicles, Fahey said. Cautioning that he is “biased” and emphasizing that he “is certainly no longer in charge” of the Army’s wheeled vehicles portfolio, he said, “I know they are already going down the path of how to sort of follow the JLTV path.”“How do I do a hefty tech demonstration—the Army and the Marine Corps—and how do I actually look at the truck missions from medium to heavy and maybe come up with a more modular design, perhaps a modular truck that can do medium or heavy types of things?”“And my personal opinion is that it may follow the same type of path,” Fahey said. “We’ll do a tech demonstration of what’s achievable. Then we’ll do a demonstration of industry delivering trucks to us. We’ll go right into [engineering and manufacturing development] based on cost/schedule/performance doable.“And then we’ll go right into production,” Fahey said, adding that he thinks the JLTV model “has proven to be a good one. And I think the next-generation truck will follow the same path.”