JLTV vs Humvee: Which Tactical Vehicle Reigns Supreme?

The first time I saw a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, it looked like it had fallen straight from outer space. Compared to the tired Humvees on the lot that it’s intended to replace, the multi-role tactical vehicle was bigger, faster, built like a tank and had the kind of suspension you usually only find under a trophy truck screaming through a Baja 1000 stage. In a word, it was rad.

But the JLTV’s budding tenure as America’s war wagon of choice hasn’t been an easy cruise down the boulevard. The Pentagon’s weapons testers have complained in the past about its high maintenance needs and low reliability, and it took soldiers less than four days to total one upon initial fielding. Hell, it even took an eagle-eyed corporal to save the Marine Corps $140 million in ruined steering columns alone.

Bureaucrats and generals have taken turns throwing roadblocks in its path, and now they’re saying the Humvee is here to stay. But so is the JLTV contract Oshkosh Defense initially won in 2015. So what’s going on?

We don’t have a crystal ball to read the JLTV’s future, but we can at least make sense of where the program is now and how it got here.

The JLTV Makes Perfect Sense on Paper

Detailed performance figures are still hush-hush, but it’s no secret that the JLTV outperforms the Humvee across the board.

According to Defense News, the JLTV trounces the Humvee’s 190-horsepower engine (that’s the most modernized version, mind you) with more than 400 horsepower from a Duramax turbodiesel engine that’s been heavily modified by Banks (yeah, that Banks). Oshkosh’s proprietary TAK-4i front suspension offers 20 inches of travel, a self-leveling suspension-aided egress system and the ability to raise and lower vehicle height from the driver’s seat. Drivers can deflate and inflate the tires without dismounting, as well.

In the two-door configuration (sporty!), Oshkosh Defense lists a payload of 5,100 pounds for the JLTV. In the heavier four-door configuration, it’s 3,500 pounds. That’s all well and good, but is the JLTV also significantly heavier? Nope: Once you add enough armor to make the Humvee survivable in modern combat, it weighs more than 13,000 pounds. The larger, more powerful, more technologically advanced JLTV weighs in at 14,000 pounds.

It also appears to be more reliable than the Humvee, despite past complaints from testers. According to Motor Trend, the JLTV covered an average of 7,051 miles between failures, compared to just 2,968 miles for the up-armored Humvee during testing.

The JLTV comes in four configurations to meet a range of mission requirements: general purpose, heavy gun carrier, utility and close combat weapons carrier. All of them are packed with technology that the Humvee can’t compete with.

The JLTV is also part of a larger restructuring of the U.S. military. In situations where the JLTV would be too big and heavy for mission requirements, the Infantry Squad Vehicle has its back. Neither the JLTV nor the ISV is more versatile than the Humvee on their own, but together, they’re more capable. By splitting duties between the two vehicles, soldiers and Marines will have access to a better solution in a wider range of missions.

Which Vehicle Would You Rather Take Fire In?

Put the facts and figures aside for a minute: If you were about to take a direct hit from a roadside bomb, which driver’s seat do you want to be sitting in?

That’s a relatively easy question to answer. Not only does the JLTV have superior armor, but it was designed from Day 1 to carry all that armor, unlike the Humvee that got everything from metal plates to sandbags thrown at it over the last 20 years in a desperate attempt to keep its occupants alive.

The JLTV’s squinty windows are smaller targets, and the windshield is heavily raked like a sports car. That’s not for aerodynamics; it’s the same principle that tank designers have been using for decades. Angling a surface effectively increases its thickness without adding mass. That’s a design philosophy I’d appreciate if 7.62mm rounds were splattering against my windshield like bugs on the highway.

It’s even easier to get in and out of the JLTV -- and not just because its suspension can drop the mine-resistant, V-shaped belly to the dirt like a SoCal lowrider. Anyone with experience in armored vehicles knows how heavy the doors can be. That can be a serious problem if you have to get out in a hurry while your door is facing uphill. But remember that SAES feature? It keeps the vehicle as close to level as possible so occupants don’t have to fight gravity to open their doors.

We have 20 years of experience telling us that the JLTV is a far better combat vehicle than the Humvee. But is it the right truck for the next war?

Red Tape: The JLTV’s Critical Vulnerability

The JLTV is the future, but that doesn’t mean the past is going away.

In 2019, Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy confirmed that reduced funding had forced the Army to reduce its JLTV order by 25%, as Task & Purpose reported at the time.

“There's no doubt the Army needs [the JLTV] in the future -- just not at the numbers of the original program of record when the requirements of a high-intensity land conflict are considered,” McCarthy said at the time.

Then, in 2020, we learned that the Army had plans to retrofit old Humvees (again) to make them more survivable. Lt. Gen. James Pasquarette, the Army G-8 at the time, told Defense News that 50,000 Humvees would remain in service once the Army acquired its last JLTV.

For those of you keeping track, that means the Army will own more of the vehicle being replaced than its replacement when it’s all said and done. That’s some military math for you.

The Marine Corps will also be hanging on to thousands of Humvees, but without any modernization (how very on-brand of them). According to then-Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, the Humvee will be deployed depending on the threat assessment of specific missions.

The Pentagon’s back-and-forth strategic shifts have taken their toll on more than the JLTV program. It’s even affecting which helicopters the military uses.

“Why the [heavy-lift replacement]? Got to carry a heavier payload and fly higher in a hotter climate,” then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, according to the Modern War Institute. “What was the heavier payload? JLTV. What drove JLTV? IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq … In many ways, they were designed for a different conflict.”

Are We Doing This or Not?

The JLTV has been in use for several years now. The Defense Department is buying more every year as the modernization push continues.

At the same time, there are newer – possibly better – vehicles on the way that could make the JLTV obsolete before it really reaches its prime. Will autonomous vehicles take its place? Will demand for hybrid powertrains push legacy diesel JLTVs aside? We’ve already seen a push for all-electric vehicles on the battlefield.

If you’re a fan of the JLTV, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. The fact that Humvees are still around proves that the military isn’t afraid of holding onto old gear if it still serves a purpose.

Likewise, the Humvee has managed to dodge mandatory retirement just as well as the A-10. Both old-timers simply refuse to quit kicking ass in the name of freedom and a grateful public salutes them for it.

It’s easy to poke fun at the military’s bumbling administrative process but maybe having more vehicles available isn’t all bad. The JLTV, ISV and Humvee all have their place, and it’s not like the military is going to recoup its money by selling off the old Humvee fleet.

So yes, the JLTV is here to stay. It is a vehicle of the future, even if it isn’t the only vehicle in that future.

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