Spending millions to rebuild the Army’s aging Humvee fleet apparently stopped making sense up on Capitol Hill.
Defense leaders, especially those in the Marine Corps, had said it was fool hardy to spend slightly less to rebuild the old fleet rather than invest in new trucks that will last longer. However, Congress pushed back pointing out how each service has recently struggled to deliver new vehicles.
AOL Defense reported last night that Congress has finally listened to those pleas from the Pentagon and agreed to cancel the Humvee Recapitalization program in the forthcoming defense budget with those funds transferred over to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program.
It took a last minute compromise between the Army and the Marine Corps to save JLTV from Congress’ ever sharpening budget axe. However, an agreement to ease off strict weight requirements sliced $80,000 off the per vehicle cost of the JLTV.
Defense officials intended to replace the entire Humvee fleet with the JLTV. Spiraling costs and missed deadlines caused Army and Marine Corps officials to amend those expectations. Army leaders now want to replace a third of its 150,000-Humvee fleet with the JLTV and Marine generals plan to buy 5,500.
Of course, the JLTV would never have had to compete with the Humvee recap if the program had run smoothly. But thus is life in the defense acquisition world where a program that meets a deadline is the outlier....
-bth: The humvee has been made permanently obsolete by the IED. It still is useful for noncombat situations so much of the US could be supported by the older vehicles. JLTV has been plagued by contract mismanagement and spiraling costs. Its astonishing how bad the Army and Marines are at managing these programs.
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