“With the strategic decision to commit to JLTV, the Marine Corps made the call to develop the light combat vehicle that is given to the operational commander for placing with all deliberate intent in harm’s way,” he said. “So it really crosses that boundary of light tactical vehicle and light combat vehicle. And, in fact, the Marine Corps is acquiring a disproportionate number of heavy gun trucks and close-combat weapons carriers as part of its JLTV acquisition. That number comes out to 5,500.”

“In the meantime, 5,500 JLTVs does not come close to covering down on the requirement that exists for a light tactical vehicle to accomplish numerous other missions that do not require the vehicle to go into a high-intensity conflict scenario,” he said. “And we address that with the HMMWV.”

“In the meantime, 5,500 JLTVs does not come close to covering down on the requirement that exists for a light tactical vehicle to accomplish numerous other missions that do not require the vehicle to go into a high-intensity conflict scenario,” he said. “And we address that with the HMMWV.”

Plans call for the reduction of the Marine Corps HMMWV fleet, currently in excess of 24,000 vehicles, down to approximately 18,500, with 5,500 of those vehicles subsequently displaced by JLTV.

The remaining Marine Corps HMMWV fleet of approximately 12,900 to 13,000 vehicles will require sustainment and other viability actions.

“In divesting from ‘24 [thousand] and change’ down to ‘18 [thousand] and change,’ we’re eliminating about one-fourth of the light tactical fleet,” Burks explained. “But we still have to maintain 13,000 vehicles through 2030, and that entails a significant effort, because the HMMWV as it stands right now does not get deployed off of the forward operating base. Why? Because we have crushed it. We have crushed it under the armor necessary to secure the occupants’ survivability, thereby stripping it, however, of driver control and stability – with lots of non-combat casualties because of that; mobility – you don’t get it off the ‘hard ball’ road; reliability – it’s awful – we’re burning through brakes at quintuple the rate. We’re burning out radiators. We’re burning out engines in 45 minutes of hard driving. It’s the dog of every convoy it’s in. It’s bad. But that’s the state of the vehicle based on what we’ve done to it.

“It’s not simply an IROAN [inspect and repair only as necessary] or a Reset,” he added. “If we want to make the HMMWV operationally relevant, we’ve got to look beyond that. The good news is that both the Marine Corps and the Army have been conceptualizing for some time and ultimately made the decision to embrace JLTV at the high end of that capability deficiency.

“So where does that leave us? It leaves us – and industry – with the ability to leverage a lot of mature and production-ready designs that are already based on extensive testing and research and development across the industrial base,” Burks continued. “The Sustainment Modification Initiative proposes to leverage these advances and through that restore the existing expanded capacity variant of the HMMWV to pre-armoring levels – in terms of safety, performance, and reliability.”

“The current HMMWV is operating thousands of pounds beyond its gross vehicle weight rating. It’s crushed from the moment it comes off the production line, and then the Marines just heap that much more stuff on them. It’s what they need to do to accomplish the mission. But the vehicle doesn’t support it. We break many different pieces of the vehicle in doing so.”

Noting that the 2004 Operational Requirements Document and the associated key performance parameters for the HMMWV Expanded Capacity Vehicle (ECV) articulate many of the capabilities being sought, he acknowledged that “cost is king and affordability constraints are paramount. Those are the limitations of the day and everything we do is bounded by that,” he said. “So that means we go after a few things here. We can’t go after everything. But some of these are mission essential. We’ve got to restore that reliability piece. We have to at least retain if not outright improve mobility. It can’t get any worse and preferably it gets a lot better. O&M [operations and maintenance] costs are another huge area. With reliability so degraded, we are paying for it. We are paying for it in so many areas of consumables and repairables, and fuel efficiency is out the window. We are focusing on those things that improve the logistics footprint and the energy efficiency when it operates in an expeditionary environment.”