Rolling out a new Humvee

Contractors vie to createa high-tech war machine

BAGHDAD

Paul Rieckhoff recalls a frustrating ride through Baghdad on a nighttime raid in 2004 as he commanded 40 soldiers hunting Iraqi insurgents. His Humvee didn’t carry gear to communicate with the armored vehicle leading the convoy.

“We literally couldn’t talk to them,” said Mr. Rieckhoff, 30, an Army first lieutenant at the time. “I didn’t know where we were going until we got there.”

Military planners are using lessons learned on the streets of Baghdad to push for a tougher, smarter successor to the Humvee, the U.S. Army workhorse that replaced the jeep a generation ago.

Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s largest defense contractor known more for fighter jets and computer networking than trucks, is offering new designs. The Pentagon may spend $10 billion to replace the Army’s 115,000 Humvees, said the Lexington Institute, a research group based in Arlington, Va., and Lockheed is vying for more than a winning idea. Its pursuit of the program is another step in its effort to branch out into new military hardware.

The Bethesda, Md.-based company, already the government’s biggest supplier of secure computer networks and the maker of the F-22 fighter jet, is developing electronics and communications equipment to turn the next U.S. presidential helicopter into an “Oval Office in the Sky.”

That may help the company win the contract to build the Army’s new truck. The vehicle, being created under the Pentagon label Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, probably will have computers hooked into wireless networks to show its location and that of friendly forces, carry advanced communications technology and offer new designs to better withstand roadside bombs.

“They want everything on this thing,” said Stephen Rann, head of the combat-support unit in the Army’s acquisition office. “What we have now doesn’t meet our needs.”

Lockheed should be taken seriously in the truck arena, said Howard Rubel, a New York analyst with Jefferies & Co., who has a “hold” rating on Lockheed shares and doesn’t own any. The company won a $9 million award in February that the Army says will help set requirements for a Humvee successor.

“They think outside the box when everyone else might just be thinking about what is the next truck,” Mr. Rubel said.

AM General Corp., a South Bend, Ind., company that has supplied the Humvee to the military for more than two decades, bid for the technology-demonstration contract that Lockheed won.

Closely held AM General isn’t out of the running to build the new truck and has a “future concept Humvee” that could vie for any award for a replacement vehicle, said spokesman Craig MacNab, who declined to provide design details.

Lockheed is also intent on winning the production contract, said Kathryn Hasse, the company’s director of tactical wheeled vehicles.

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