Expanding Military Missions Fuel Market for Custom Trucks.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The Pentagon's evolving responsibilities for homeland defense could accelerate demand for customized vehicles, such as pick-up trucks and SUVs, equipped with advanced sensors, ballistic protection and a wide array of weapons.

As the military services discern their specific roles in domestic security, agencies that develop vehicle technologies, such as the Army's National Automotive Center, see emerging opportunities to bring their technology to the forefront. The NAC is a government organization, but works mostly with commercial automotive and electronics industries, seeking and testing technologies that potentially could have military utility.

NAC officials expect that the expanding military involvement in homeland defense could result in new requirements for sturdy light trucks and SUVs equipped with high-tech gear and non-lethal weapons.

About a year ago, the NAG, based in Detroit, unveiled the so-called Smart Truck, a Ford F-350 vehicle, designed to be a test bed for vehicle-intelligence technologies--ranging from multimedia computers and electronics to laser weapons, wireless communications and non-lethal countermeasures against assailants or suspected terrorists.

The Smart Truck initially was mocked by some military insiders as being "too Hollywood" for the type of duties normally associated with military operations. But now that the homeland defense mission has gained prominence, there is a growing acceptance of the Smart Truck as a potential source of useful technologies for military and law-enforcement vehicles.

"When we came up with the concept, it was designed with a urban warfare mission in mind," said Germaine Fuller, project manager for the Smart Truck. Because the Army increasingly had become involved in peacekeeping operations, the NAG sought to develop a vehicle that could blend into urban settings, and could provide some lethality and reconnaissance capability, without looking "too military," Fuller said in an interview.

A similar rationale could apply to domestic security missions in the United States, where military troops or law-enforcement agents may want to operate incognito, in a vehicle that looks like a regular truck.

The NAG believes that there is a homeland defense application for the Smart Truck, said Fuller. "We are looking at the possibilities at how we can help." Several intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, she said, have expressed "tremendous interest."

The Smart Truck is one of two complementary programs that the NAG hopes will lead the way toward a new light tactical truck for the U.S. Army and other military services. The...