One significant challenge involves the acquisition timeframe for the Marine Corps vehicles.

“We need to complete that acquisition by the end of FY 21 because of the ACV [Amphibious Combat Vehicle] ‘bow wave’ and the Marine Corps’ plan, through sequential modernization of capabilities, to begin the fielding of the ACV after that time,” Burks stated.

“In the meantime, 5,500 JLTVs does not come close to covering down on the requirement that exists for a light tactical vehicle to accomplish numerous other missions that do not require the vehicle to go into a high-intensity conflict scenario,” he said. “And we address that with the HMMWV.”

Plans call for the reduction of the Marine Corps HMMWV fleet, currently in excess of 24,000 vehicles, down to approximately 18,500, with 5,500 of those vehicles subsequently displaced by JLTV.

The remaining Marine Corps HMMWV fleet of approximately 12,900 to 13,000 vehicles will require sustainment and other viability actions.

“In divesting from ‘24 [thousand] and change’ down to ‘18 [thousand] and change,’ we’re eliminating about one-fourth of the light tactical fleet,” Burks explained. “But we still have to maintain 13,000 vehicles through 2030, and that entails a significant effort, because the HMMWV as it stands right now does not get deployed off of the forward operating base. Why? Because we have crushed it. We have crushed it under the armor necessary to secure the occupants’ survivability, thereby stripping it, however, of driver control and stability – with lots of non-combat casualties because of that; mobility – you don’t get it off the ‘hard ball’ road; reliability – it’s awful – we’re burning through brakes at quintuple the rate. We’re burning out radiators. We’re burning out engines in 45 minutes of hard driving. It’s the dog of every convoy it’s in. It’s bad. But that’s the state of the vehicle based on what we’ve done to it.

“It’s not simply an IROAN [inspect and repair only as necessary] or a Reset,” he added. “If we want to make the HMMWV operationally relevant, we’ve got to look beyond that. And the good news is that both the Marine Corps and the Army have been conceptualizing for some time and ultimately only made the decision to embrace JLTV at the high end of that capability deficiency last fall.

“So where does that leave us? It leaves us – and industry – with the ability to leverage a lot of mature and production-ready designs that are already based on extensive testing and research and development across the industrial base. The Sustainment Modification Initiative proposes to leverage these advances and through that restore the existing expanded capacity variant of the HMMWV to pre-armoring levels – in terms of safety, performance, and reliability.”

Noting that the 2004 Operational Requirements Document and the associated key performance parameters for the HMMWV Expanded Capacity Vehicle (ECV) articulate many of the capabilities being sought, he acknowledged that “cost is king and affordability constraints are paramount. Those are the limitations of the day and everything we do is bounded by that,” he said. “So that means we go after a few things here. We can’t go after everything. But some of these are mission essential. We’ve got to restore that reliability piece. We have to at least retain if not outright improve mobility. It can’t get any worse and preferably it gets a lot better. O&M [operations and maintenance] costs are another huge area. With reliability so degraded, we are paying for it. We are paying for it in so many areas of consumables and repairables. And fuel efficiency is out the window. So we are focusing on those things that improve the logistics footprint and the energy efficiency when it operates in an expeditionary environment.

“Something else that goes along with that is payload,” he added. “The current HMMWV is operating thousands of pounds beyond its gross vehicle weight rating. It’s crushed from the moment it comes off the production line. And then the Marines just heap that much more stuff on them. It’s what they need to do to accomplish the mission. But the vehicle doesn’t support it. And we break many different pieces of the vehicle in doing so.”

According to Burks, improving HMMWV protection levels is “the last thing among the priorities.”

“Force protection is not an outright priority at this point, since JLTV is going to be armored to take those shots,” he said. “But other considerations that are associated with protective features are still very relevant. Consider what we would do to protect gas tanks, as an example, or to improve the vulnerabilities of some sub-assemblies to compromise in the event of taking a hit. Think of things that make the vehicle sufficiently survivable for egress following an impact. Those are all part of that focus on the remaining HMMWVs.”

While the ECV requirements help to identify target capabilities for a large slice of the HMMWV fleet, the fact is that the approximately 13,000 HMMWVs that will remain with the Marine Corps will include approximately 5,000 A2 models.

“We’re still thousands below our former Authorized Acquisition Objective for ECVs,” Burks said. “But I’ve got almost 8,000 and I’m looking for ways around the margins to acquire more. Actually I just received an authorization letter from CD&I [Combat Development & Integration] to do so, and some Foreign Military Sales money that I am applying to that effect. But the quantities are small. It’s on the margins. It’s what I would call ‘procurement by exception.’ So my ideal state is actually to have many more ECVs, with the only ones that I really can’t replace among the A2s being the ambulances. The rest I’d like to replace. But the population I’m working with and the ECV business case I’m communicating to industry at this point is that up to around 8,000 would otherwise be intended to receive these sustainment modifications.”