The Army today unveiled its new plan for buying wheeled vehicles over the next 30 years, calling for a 15 percent cut to its fleet of roughly 260,000 trucks, Humvees and MRAPs currently in service by 2017, Maj. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, director of army force development, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
Much of this will be achieved by retiring the oldest trucks in the inventory and many of the Humvees while replacing them at "reasonable" rates.
All of this is expected to reduce the services planned costs for tactical wheeled vehicle buys from $4.5 billion a year to $2.5 billion a year by about 2015.
Meanwhile, the service still plans to have Joint Light Tactical Vehicles make up about one third of the fleet. The service plans on having JLTVs -- the replacement for some Humvees -- make up about a third of its future light tactical vehicle fleet which for now, consists of only Humvees. The Army plans to stop buying Humvees for itself after 2012, according to Speohr.
The service is still looking at its technology options for the JLTV.
The roughly 20,000-strong MRAP fleet will stay about the same size except for about 1,500 RG-33 and Cougar MRAPs that the service will try to transfer to other users.
Future utility trucks bought by the Army will be designed to easily accept snap-on armor.
