Hummer's Days Numbered??

[tom.mcinerney]

USA Today article says Pentagon plans to replace Hummer within a few years , as opposed to earlier plans allowing procurement to continue for a decade.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050824/ts_usatoday/efforttoreplacehumveespedup

[john8662]

Sounds like they want mini-tanks that get the fuel economy of the compact car (hybrid technology). This should be interesting, but there is a lot of truth to the article. The main point is the adding of additional armor that is causing weight problems. The weight problems cause drivetrain problems, suspension problems, and drivability concerns.

Thanks for the read Tom!

[NH2112]

The biggest problem is the military wants to use humvees as something they were never intended to be - combat vehicles. The closest the humvee was meant to come to being a combat vehicle was the armored TOW missile carrier, but its armor was light and only protected against shell fragments and some small arms. These weighed in at maybe 6000-6500lbs, much less than the current up-armored humvees which are about twice as heavy. The 4-litter armored ambulance models were the heaviest, weighing in at around 8000lbs. While I was in Germany we took 2 of these, gutted them, and installed the radios, computers, map boards, sandbagged floors, etc, needed for a field artillery fire direction center. We had so many problems with our M577 tracked command post carriers that these mods were pretty much a necessity, and they actually worked very well. The humvees would go about 90% of the places the M577s would, and could actually keep up with the rest of the convoy (no 10-15mph convoy speeds any more.) The problems the humvees had were mostly due to the increased weight they were carrying (geared hub problems, for the most part) and the fact that the 100A alternators the ambulances had weren't really big enough to power the radios, computer, lights, etc. We idled the engines pretty much 24/7 when in the field, added a quart of 15W40 every day, and made some nice smokescreens when we moved out smile.gif

Edited to add: The article mentions they want the next vehicle to have more armor, to protect against the larger IEDs and roadside bombs. Nice thought, but in a battle between bomb and armor, bomb always wins because if you put enough armor on something to protect it from all blasts, it ends up being immobile. The fact is, fighting insurgents who use IEDs and bombs requires vehicles that can better take the blasts, and that means tanks or mine-protected vehicles such as the South African Okapi (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/okapi.htm) , Buffel (http://www.answers.com/topic/buffel), or Casspir (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rsa/casspir.htm).

[ 08-30-2005, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: NH2112 ]

[derek840378]

i think the "hummer" should be safe. even if the military wants to replace the "HMMWV" the hummer H1, H2, H3 and H4(?) should still be produced. How long has it been since the military has used jeeps?