Vehicles chosen for next phase of JLTV

AM General has announced that its independent proposal for the US military's new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), has been selected for an Engineering, Manufacturing and Development (EMD) phase contract. The EMD contract, valued at $64.5 million, was announced 22 August 2012.

Under the contract, AM General will produce and deliver 22 prototypes of its Blast Resistant Vehicle - Off road (BRV-O) for government testing.

According to AM General, the BRV-O is based on more than a decade of the company’s investments in research, development and testing for this next-generation light tactical military vehicle. Its mobility technology has been matured to meet current requirements, and it has accumulated more than 300,000 operational test miles and ‘demonstrated high reliability and maintainability’.

The vehicle features a crew capsule and modular armour already proven effective in government-supervised blast testing. The vehicle has been designed to be readily adaptable to future changes in US military missions, enemy threats and new protection technologies as they emerge.

It also features AM General's lightweight, fuel efficient and high performance engine and transmission powertrain; a self-levelling suspension system; a C4ISR backbone with open-standard networked architecture and clustered super-computing power.

Lockheed Martin and Oshkosh Corporation were also chosen for the 27 month EMD phase, and were awarded contracts for $66 million and $56 million respectively.