The Marine Corps has canceled plans to modernize its fleet of Humvees due to budget constraints — a decision one member of Congress said the service is being forced to make that could endanger troops.
With another round of across-the-board spending cuts possibly hitting the Corps' budget in October, the service has halted ecause of budget constraints, the Marine Corps canceled plans to procure a next-generation Humvee. Theose upgraded vehicles were slated to serve as a stopgap, measure by filling the role of a highly mobile armored vehicle while the service continues its planned purchase procurement of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
Now Marines will likely make do ue with the fleet of aging vehicles they have until the first round of JLTVs are fielded in 2018. The service will "assume the risk and sustain the remaining fleet of Humvees," Bill Taylor, the program executive officer for Land Systems Marine Corps, told lawmakers during a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Iraq veteran Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said she's concerned military leaders are being forced to cut programs that could leave troops vulnerable.
"I'm preaching to the choir here, [but] you guys are being forced to make some really tough decisions that put our troops at great risk — potentially great risk — as a result of sequestration, something that we certainly, on this side of the – of the hearing room, need to do our job to end," she said.
Taylor said much of the work to modernize the Corps' fleet of Humvees is already done, and could be picked back up if the budget constraints were lifted.
"We have actually completed the development work and put three capability packages on the shelf," he said. "So if in times of prosperity, the Marine Corps can return to those engineering proposals and reconsider instituting them in terms of procurement."
With research and development complete, procurement of updated Humvees could occur within about a year if the service received money and approval to move forward, he said.
The Corps' Humvees have aged under the immense weight of additional armor added hastily during the Iraq War to protect against the then-emerging threat of improvised explosive devices, including shaped charges that could cut through light- to moderate- armor.
The weight not only made them less mobile, but led and lead to restrictions that limited their use to "inside the wire" as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles MRAPs were rushed to the field. The additions ut it also put immense strain on the vehicles' suspension systems, engines and transmissions — none of which were originally designed for the extra burden.
Service pPlans originally called for 6,700 Humvees to be upgraded. The Marine Corps was going to keep 18,500 of its 24,000 Humvees. They were going to replace and add as the service shrank from 24,000 to 18,500 Humvees and worked to ultimately replace 5,500 with JLTVs. The rest of Marine Humvees would be maintained through about 2030, according to documents published by Marine Corps Systems Command.
Several companies are now competing for the final JLTV contract which could ultimately result in a joint Army-Marine Corps purchase of nearly 55,000 vehicles.
