The U.S. military will be waiting a while longer for an overdue replacement for the Humvee. According to Defense News, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, which houses a General Motors produced Duramax V8 engine, has been delayed substantial due to courtroom drama.
Lockheed Martin, which already takes ownership of a large portion of the defense budget, has been in a battle over Oshkosh Defense, the company awarded the contract to build the JLTV. Lockheed launched an official protest over the matter, but it was thrown out this past December.
However, Lockheed already had dished the damage. Oshkosh was unable to work on the JLTV during the protest period, which has led to significant delays for the new vehicle. 16,901 vehicles were to be completed for an initial production contract, but those want begin to arrive until 2019 for the U.S. army. The U.S. marine corps is looking closer to 2020.
“A 90-day delay grew into about six- or an eight-month delay just because of the difficulty of rescheduling a test phase that we were going to do, which then impacts the decision date for the full-rate production decision; which, in turn, puts our funding out of phase for the JLTV program…which then allowed us to take a look at the time difference between the completion of testing and that whole rate production decision, and it ended up stretching out IOC about a year,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Naval Expeditionary Programs and Logistics Management, Thomas Dee, told Defense News.
Looks like the Humvee will have to keep chugging along for now.
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