On a recent trip to AM General’s main research plant in Livonia, Mich., I found out that the manufacturer of the military’s primary utility vehicle has begun research on an armor kit intended to protect troops against the most deadly roadside bomb threat in Iraq.
AM General, which makes the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle — more popularly known as the “Humvee” — is helping the Army develop a new “Frag Kit 6″ armor package for some of its Iraq-bound vehicles to defeat specialized explosively formed projectile munitions that can pierce current Humvee armor.
The Frag Kit 6 is stronger than the recently-fielded Frag Kit 5, which was primarily designed to protect Humvee crews from roadside bombs that detonate under the vehicle or ones with force enough to split an armored troop carrier in two.
The move comes as the Army and Marine Corps work feverishly to field Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, manufacturers say are designed to withstand EFP bombs. The curved hulls, massive wheels and thick armor of MRAPs help deflect the molten metal projectile of an EFP that current Humvees can’t withstand.
The Frag Kit 6 armor uses various metal combinations and spacing to absorb the ballistic impact of an EFP without penetrating the crew cabin. It will be placed over the armor plating of an M1151 Humvee, the most protective Humvee design fielded in combat.
But company officials admit the Army Research Lab-designed package isn’t a perfect solution.
“It’s a significant weight increase on the truck — about 1,000 pounds — and it adds about 12 inches each side of the truck of the entire width,” said Larry Day, program executive with AM General Defense.
The doors are so heavy, troops may need a mechanical assist device to open and close them and drivers will likely require built-in visual references so they’ll know if they can fit the vehicle in narrow spaces.
Though Day said there is no current order for a Frag Kit 6-configured Humvee, his company is hedging its bets in case the call comes for the newer armor.
“We have not been given the go-ahead to put them into production or even finalize the design,” Day said. “But it’s our responsibility integrate them onto our doors, so it would be better for us to do it.”
AM General is planning to outfit about 3,000 M1151 Humvees with the Frag Kit 6 doors if the Army decides that’s the way to go.
Despite continued armor upgrades to the venerable Humvee — which traces its developmental lineage to the early 1980s — company officials are scrambling to meet the evolving improvised explosive device threat in Iraq that always seems to be one step ahead of Humvee designs.
With the current popularity of the MRAP — which supporters claim boasts a record of no U.S. troops killed inside its heavily-armored cabin — AM General is holding to the idea that the Humvee will still play a major role in a post-Iraq U.S. military force.
The company is cranking out standard-armored Humvees in its South Bend, Ind., plant at a rate of about 80 per day, but has the capacity to ramp up that number significantly.
And AM General engineers are fine tuning a new Humvee design to bridge the gap between the current vehicle and any future Humvee replacement, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
The so-called “Evolutionary Concept Vehicle II” looks similar to the Humvee, but features a hydraulic suspension that can raise and lower the truck, pulling it further away from an IED blast and allowing the 83-inch high vehicle to fit in the same spaces as the 76-inch tall Humvee.
The ECV II’s increased height helps provide a roomier crew cabin — without making the vehicle any wider — and it will sport a more powerful engine and configurable armor for specific missions.
“We’ve got a truck that subjectively, when you’ve got it loaded, feels faster than the current Humvee loaded, but it’s 33 percent heavier,” said John Smreker, AM General’s executive director for engineering.
“This was sort of the result of a whole bunch of different little programs we had over the last five or six years and we kind of [brought] together all the things that we learned,” he added.
AM General plans to deliver ECV II test vehicles to the Army in November, with a target date for a full-scale production contract in 2009.
Cue politician asking why soldiers don’t have “Frag Kit 7″ in three, two, one.….……
Lipstick on a pig. Nice try AM General..had a good run, but the party’s over.
Let
Christian,
MRAPs in general have the following that the armored Humvee does not:
1) Vee shaped hull with higher wheel base between hull and ground to let explosive energy escape
2) Better armor package
3) More internal room.
4) Much better air conditioning
The first factor makes it highly resistant to blast type land mine and IED attacks. A typical MRAP can take a hit by pair stacked 17 lb anti-tank mines and keep the crew uninjured.
MRAPs tend to be less mobile than Humvees. All of MRAPs are much larger than a Humvee and will not fit in narrow streets or turn as sharply as a Humvee. They all eat more fuel. They all cost more to operate.
I have dealt with three MRAPs professionally: the Force Protection Cougar, the TVSLP Caiman and the failed Textron Armored Security Vehicle (ASV M1117) variant. The ASV was an armored vehicle and it failed the MRAP competition on cost and production schedule grounds.
The Cougar and Caiman are two ends of the South African armored anti-mine truck technology tree.
The Cougar protects both the crew and the drive train and weighs over 20 tons. It cannot go where a Humvee can go off road or on the same slopes, despite its low pressure tire CTIS system.
The Caiman is based on the 5-ton FMTV chassis and strictly protects the crew. It is more vulnerable to mobility kills than the Cougar but is lighter. It has the full slope mobility performance of a loaded FMTV. I refer to it as the
Dennis,
Care to imagine the sccreaming if we rushed a MRAV into service at great cost only to find it didn’t preform as advertized? For that matter, did you notice that the new, bigger vehicles physically can’t fit into or travel across some of the places the Humvee CAN go? Given a choice, would you rather be on foot from the point where the streets are too narrow or the ground too soft for the MRAV, or would you rather take a less well armored Humvee?
cant blame AM General.…their just trying to keep the hummer alive. But surely the Army knows how much better the MRAPS are VS the Humvees.
To: The Army & Marines.….stick with the Cougar & buffalo MRAPS.
Well, isn’t that “Special” makes me all warm n fuzzy. And Im curious? These are “the pro’s?“
What they did not take into consideration (ie-always good to “study the problem thoroughly before creating a solution to it.“
Soooo, this “special armor” will stop and EFP? Cool! Except all personnel within the vehicle will be dead from overpressure injuries due to the fluid dynamics of the “event”, ie, the blast “wave” will pass through and exit out of the opposite side of the warfighter before it has tip to equalize the high then low pressure in the longs, intestines, ears (any air pocket in the body), thusly saving them from a projectile, but there still dead from the blast wave propogation.
Best, DW
Greetings Cybrludite,
I am not against having a standard vehicle that has many variations to meet different roles. I understand why the military has gone down the Humvee road.
That is not my criticism.
My criticism is that the army has not been as responsive as they could have been. And, even though we have a very educated command structure, they have failed to see how this was going to go; and respond appropriately.
In Vietnam they plated the sides of the duce and a half’s because they were getting ambushed. I just finished reading “The Long Road home” which is about the first serious fight we had in Sadr City, trying to rescue a pinned down platoon.
What did they use to go into the city? Canvas topped Humvees and an LMTV trucks with no protection (This was in 2004 before almost all the Humvees were up armored). They had about an 80% casualty rate in the back of those trucks (Cindy Sheehan
Why not incorporate a mine detector capability to a humvee. the technology is there.Let us say about a hundred feet radius is enough to warn the crews of an explosive device planted on their way while travelling. I know it is possible. Its difficult to manuever an overweight armoured vehicle in a city style or desert warfare. After all, it takes more or less 20 years to have a good soldier.But maybe ONLY a few years to develop such a technology.
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Trying to achieve what has not yet been accomplished is the soul of american inginuity. It’s just a shame that during peace time the urgency to achieve the development of armor that actually works is not pursued as hard as that is now placed on the lives of our brave troops that die daily in the rash acts of numbers and media pursasion to accept what a one time was unacceptable and has to be proven at the expense of our friends and relatives that make the ultimate sacrifice to field test an unworthy product. That’s why I do what I do. Your experience and feedback could be the insight we need to achieve the ultimate break through. 1 life lost is unacceptable. 100% threat defeat is our goal. http://www.aquadefensetechnologies.com