Threats from Below: Roadside Bombs Still a Concern for Tactical Wheeled Vehicles.

• Date: 01 February 2025
• Author: Gourley, Scott R.
• Published date: 01 February 2025

While the war in Ukraine has put a spotlight on so-called kamikaze drones and the need to protect smaller military vehicles from sky-borne threats, the scourge of roadside bombs and mines has not gone away.

Both system and crew survivability have always been critical elements in the design and fielding of tactical wheeled vehicles, and those criteria were readjusted in the 2007-2008 timeframe as U.S. forces encountered battlefield threats of improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades capable of providing lethal vehicle side and underbody effects.

Those threats have continued to evolve over nearly two decades, presenting vehicle designers with new survivability challenges.

While roadside bombs and IEDs are no longer making headlines, protecting small tactical wheeled vehicles is still very much at the forefront of the manufacturers' designs.

According to Pat Williams, chief programs officer for M-ATV manufacturer Oshkosh Defense, the underbody mine and IED threats encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan put an emphasis on vehicular survivability "in a way we weren't used to thinking about."

"If you think about how our design philosophy has gone on tactical wheeled vehicles from then until now, it's very much rooted in the lessons we learned during those operations, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, in terms of the design maturity, the architecture of the vehicle and the understanding of the threats and the impacts on the vehicles," Williams said.

Williams outlined a vehicular protection continuum stretching back to the early days of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, describing that period as "the days of the MRAPs, the great big, heavy, highly armored, very safe vehicles."

"However, they had mobility issues just because they were so heavy," he said.

Afghanistan required something with the level of protection of those large vehicles, but at half the size and with the offroad mobility for the rugged trails there. The solution was the M-ATV, he said.

Years on, the military turned to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, which offered a similar level of survivability but much higher mobility in a package that's almost half the size of an M-ATV.

"Migrating first to the great big, heavy, very safe vehicles, then to a very much lighter, highly mobile vehicle with comparable protection is just one example of what we learned over time, just by looking at different architectures, looking at all those different pieces, synthetic materials, composite...