Oshkosh Defense has begun upgrading the joint light tactical vehicle (JLTV) in response to a critical Pentagon report issued earlier this year, a company executive said on October 15. The Defense Department”s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation Robert Behler said in his 2018 annual report published in January that the JLTV was “not operationally suitable because of deficiencies in reliability, maintainability, training, manuals, crew situational awareness, and safety.”
To address some of these problems, Oshkosh modified the vehicle with bigger windows, a front-facing camera, and a muffler, George Mansfield, Vice President and General Manager of Joint Programs at Oshkosh Defense, said in an interview at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington, DC. “They weren”t contractual requirements, but they did want improvements to them,” he said.
The company is also doing additional work to reduce the vehicle’s interior noise. “We”re actually looking at a different alternator that”s a little quieter,” he noted. The Army authorized full-rate production of the JLTV in June. The research, development, test, and evaluation and procurement fiscal year 2020 budget request for all four services called for $1.641 billion to be spent on 4,090 of the vehicles, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Marine Corps is looking to purchase over 9,000 JLTVs over the life of the program.