“A lot of people attack that problem by lowering the entire vehicle down,” he asserted. “But the problem when you do that is you lose your ground clearance. Then when you’re trying to load it on a CH-47 in a hostile area, in mud or foliage, you lower your ground clearance and lose your speed. We don’t. We just pull those pins, lower the weapon into the bed of the truck in 30 seconds or less, and drive right onto the Chinook.”
Other design features include a fuel tank mounted in the rear of the vehicle, allowing the easy application of auxiliary tanks to achieve anywhere from 300 to 1,000 miles of range, as well as battery location to facilitate remoting myriad communication system options.
Cassidy noted that SAIC had been brought in during the design process to design multiple vehicle antennas and certify antenna locations.
Highlighting the fact that the vehicle was designed for large warfighters wearing equipment, Cassidy said that the GMV 1.1 program actually lengthens the cab four inches beyond the prototype design to provide more space to tilt seats and fit warfighters with gear, including night vision goggles.
“This truck goes over 100 miles an hour,” he said. “It goes 0 – 60 in under nine seconds, which is very fast for an armored vehicle. And with 14 inches of wheel travel front and back it is an incredible ride.”
Although the GMV 1.1 program does not require armor at this point, Navistar Defense displayed the vehicle equipped with both B and C armor kits. The existence of a scalable armor package for the SOTV designs reflects the fact that the company “worked down from the NSTT” to create their offering.
The Navistar SOTV resembles the ubiquitous Toyota Hilux truck, but is 10 percent larger and already capable of being up-armored with applique kits. Navistar artist’s rendering
“Here’s our gamble,” Cassidy acknowledged. “USSOCOM thought they would be getting an open top vehicle [for GMV 1.1]. There are six competitors left and five of them are open top. We are an enclosed cab. And one reason for our decision is that it takes very long to develop armored cabs. So we kept the cab – with base armor on the floor, the sides, the hinges, the bullet traps – because that’s very hard to add. So we kept that and we use that high hard armor steel as the base of our vehicle. Then we have options for doors – from half doors to unarmored doors to fully armored doors. Then we have the ability inside to add even further armor.”
“With everyone else it’s an unarmored truck,” he concluded. “That was a constant toss-up for us, but we think that if you really care about armoring your vehicle later – and that requirement was two years down the road – they can armor ours immediately. I don’t think you can look at it as an afterthought. We’ve learned that lesson on other platforms – trying to armor a vehicle after it was designed. So we submitted a base armor with our package. And even with that it still meets transportability and weight requirements. We were able to get under the curb weight to submit the truck with armor on it.”