Rolling ahead: move over MRAP: new light tactical vehicles are coming.

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MONTEREY, Calif. -- There are narrow alleyways and small streets in Fallujah, Iraq, through which most military trucks cannot travel.

Even the formidable mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle--rushed to the battlefield to protect troops from roadside bombs--has difficulties driving in the urban terrain. To cross small bridges, troops must dismount from the vehicle while the driver sticks his foot out the door to "walk" the multi-ton truck across the way, says Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, deputy commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

The scenario may sound like the punch line of a joke, but it is no laughing matter to Defense Department officials speaking here at NDIA's tactical wheeled vehicles conference. They point to this boots-on-the-ground situation as one of the salient reasons for continuing to buy humvees--the military's longtime workhorse--while developing its next-generation replacement, the joint light tactical vehicle.

"The reason JLTV is so important to us is because it gives an expeditionary capability back to the Army and the Marine Corps," says Brig. Gen. John Bartley, the Army's program executive officer for combat support and combat services support.

That mobility is becoming paramount, as the Army and Marine Corps look beyond the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to anticipate future operations, officials say. The services assert that vehicles suited for urban warfare will continue to be a necessity, and for that reason, the attractiveness of trucks with the agility to navigate city streets--and handle roadside bombs--is growing.

Plagued with aging fleets of combat-worn humvees, the ground forces want to buy as many as 50,000 of the joint light tactical vehicles and have them in operation by the mid-2010s.

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The Army and Marine Corps issued a solicitation for bids in February and they expect to award a minimum of two contracts for a 27-month technology development phase. Competitors will design and build prototypes during the initial 15 months. In the year following, the vehicles will be tested against a flurry of military standards.

"We will take one of those overall systems and we will blow it up," says Bartley. Besides the live fire testing, the services plan to put 20,000 miles on the vehicles, load them onto Navy ships and sling them under the bellies of helicopters to evaluate them on factors of reliability, protection and transportability.

The Marines especially are concerned about the weight of the vehicles. Up armored trucks and other vital equipment are weighing out their ships, which leaves commanders no choice but to leave gear behind on the pier as their ships set sail, says Nicholson. "We're a little bit heavy around the middle now," he says. The Marines want to regain their identity as an expeditionary fighting force capable of doing amphibious operations, and fitting the JLTV aboard their cargo and amphibious ships is a top priority.

For the Army, the requirement is for the vehicles to be transportable by the CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

With the persistent threat of improvised explosive devices, both services also want hefty armoring on the vehicles to protect their crews. MRAPs have been successful against roadside bombs in part because of their v-shaped hull, which deflects the energy of explosions away from the cab, and their ground clearance, which puts more distance between the explosive and the crew compartment.

Those characteristics are desirable in the JLTV, officials say. But they must not compromise the ability of crews to acquire what the military calls "situational awareness" of the environment around the vehicle.

"If you protect them, how do you give them the visibility outside the vehicle, or the awareness of what's going on outside the vehicle as they go forward?" Bartley points out.

Critics say that the weight and protection requirements for the vehicles present a paradox. Armoring the vehicles adds weight; taking that weight off reduces the protection.

Some companies that have built prototypes acknowledge that the curb weight of their vehicles is above the specified limit due to armoring. But they say they will shed that weight in time for proposals.

Driven by the success of fielding MRAPs so quickly to Iraq, expectations in the services are high for the JLTV.

"Industry has shown us that you can go ahead and build eight vehicles to do a specific mission," says Bartley, referring to the production of different variations of MRAPs. Now industry must prove that it can give the military a new family of vehicles and also produce them in significant numbers, he adds.

The JLTV comprises 10 variants of two-, four- and six-seat vehicles in three payload categories. There also is a trailer component that officials would like concurrently developed with the vehicle.

Already companies have unveiled prototypes to compete for the contracts.

At the Association of the United States Army winter show in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Lockheed Martin Corp.--teamed with Armor Holdings, now owned by BAE Systems--introduced its second JLTV prototype, the Utility Vehicle Light, designed to accommodate the 5,100-pound payload requirement of the category C vehicles.

"We put this thing through hell," says Louis De Santis Jr., vice president and general manager of Lockheed's ground vehicle systems. The prototype has undergone 5,000 miles of testing, and the improved v-hull is "well beyond threshold requirements," he says.

Several other companies are posturing themselves to vie for the contracts. Competitors include a General Dynamics-AM General team, BAE Systems and Navistar, Textron and Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Oshkosh Truck Corp., and Force Protection Inc.

Bartley advises industry to heed the lessons of the war in Iraq.

"If there's anything that this persistent conflict has taught us, it's that we've got to be able to adapt to change," he says. He advocates building a platform with a foundation that can quickly adapt to changing threats, such as small arms fire and sophisticated roadside bombs.

But more importantly, he cautions companies to price their products fairly and accurately. "Dollars are a finite resource. If you price yourself out, you will force us into making a decision based upon how many we've got. Give me a fair and reasonable price for technology development."

Pentagon officials expect the department's budget to decline in the years ahead, and especially once U.S. troops leave Iraq. Even if the Defense Department's budgets were to remain stable, the percentages available for procurement and research and development will likely decline because of large costs associated with the force structure the military has established, says Anthony Melita, director of land warfare and munitions in the Pentagon's chief acquisitions office. "As Charles Darwin once said, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most responsive to change," he says.

A truck prototype funded by the Office of Naval Research has proven the concept of a next-generation humvee and defined the realm of possibility, says Marine Lt. Col. Ruben Garza, product manager for the JLTV. Standing 80 inches high, 96 inches wide and 220 inches long, the combat tactical vehicle technology demonstrator is "a lot bigger than the humvee." With a monocoque aluminum-based v-shaped hull, the 6-cylinder, 322-horsepower vehicle is designed to carry six occupants--a driver and five passengers--and 6,000 pounds of payload.

During a five-week limited user evaluation at the Nevada Automotive Test Center, participants from all the services tested the 25,000-pound CTV. Troops said they liked the size, performance and power of the vehicle, which drove 10 to 15 miles per hour faster than the humvee. Though they liked the saloon-type doors that swung out, they thought the vehicle sat a little too high off the ground for mounts and dismounts. The vehicle has 24 inches of ground clearance from the bottom of the v-hull, but the actual vehicle itself is three feet off the ground. Inside the vehicle, troops said they wanted specific storage areas for their equipment, rations and ammunition. They also complained about having blind spots and limited visibility of the outside environment, says Garza.

Unlike the whirlwind acquisition last year of the bomb-hardy MRAP vehicles, the process for procuring JLTV promises to be more orderly and subjected to closer scrutiny.

After six Pentagon programs last year exceeded the cost caps set in the Nunn-McCurdy law, the department's acquisitions chief John Young issued a mandate requiring procurement programs to include a competitive prototyping phase to ensure that technologies are mature enough to proceed through development to deliver on time and within budget.

As one of the first programs to fall under the mandate, JLTV has the opportunity to set the standard of how the Defense Department does acquisitions, says Bartley. While they wait for JLTV, both the Army and Marine Corps are buying advanced versions of the humvee, called the expanded capacity vehicle, which addresses reliability issues and incorporates some of the lessons the services have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The services don't want to be caught short-handed in the event of another conflict before JLTV is fielded, explains Army Lt. Col. Sam Homsy, product manager of light tactical vehicles. The Army is testing the ECV2, a humvee made by AM General, and if it passes muster, the service will procure those vehicles under a sole-source contract, he adds.