The next Humvee: Army, Marines weigh options.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: UPFRONT

The Army and Marine Corps may decide as early as May 2007 to begin searching for a new vehicle that would replace the ubiquitous Humvee.

But even though both services have indicated their intent and desire to buy a new light tactical truck, they are nowhere close to agreeing on exactly what kind of vehicle they want.

During the next 12 months, Army and Marine officials will evaluate industry "white papers" and several prototype vehicles in an attempt to paint a realistic picture of what the industry has to offer, and ultimately settle on what to buy.

Overseeing this effort is Army Col. John Myers, program manager for future tactical systems. His office was created last October specifically to help define performance specs for the new vehicle, and determine whether the services will be ready to solicit bids from manufacturers by May 2007.

"Between now and the milestone decision in May 2007, we are going to create a joint program office to deal with the joint light tactical vehicle," Myers says in a recent interview. "At this point, it is a discussion for the Army and the Marines to look at what technologies are out there and, if we were to establish a new program for a future truck, what it's going to have in it," says Myers.

Ultimately it will be up to the Army's top leadership to establish "at what point you stop funding current trucks and start funding a new truck," he adds. "We need a requirements document before we get money, It's too premature at this point to assume we'll get production money. We are in a concept phase."

A "request for information" published by the Marine Corps in January offers a glimpse of the services' wish-lists and points to the difficulties they will face in trying to accommodate divergent Army and Marine requirements into a single vehicle.

The most likely scenario is that both services will buy different variants, even though they will be part of the same family of vehicles. "The Marines want a variant that is more combat oriented ... The Army wants some other vehicles for utility missions, to carry shelters," says Myers. "How many variants we end up with depends on the requirements. We don't know yet."

The request for information asks manufacturers to propose ideas on how to build a "joint light tactical vehicle" with multiple configurations: a six-passenger combat truck, a command and control vehicle, a light weapons platform, an ambulance, a utility truck, a reconnaissance and a combat engineer support...