Soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Italy are next in line to get their hands on the Army’s brand new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Task & Purpose has learned.
The Army had in 2017 initially planned on fielding the first JLTVs to an infantry brigade combat team with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York.
In December 2018, the Army announced that the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, would receive the vehicles first instead.
“In late 2017 the Army Requirements Oversight Council directed a study to determine which variations of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) would be best suited for an Infantry Brigade Combat Team,” Army public affairs officials Lt. Col. Isaac Taylor explained to Task & Purpose in an email.
“In order to make that assessment, while keeping the program on schedule, the Army decided to first field the vehicles to an Armored Brigade Combat Team attached to the 3rd Infantry Division.”
The 3rd ID Raider Brigade is clearly putting the JLTV through its paces: Soldiers managed to flip a training vehicle during Operator New Equipment Training on Jan,. 18, just four days after the unit took possession its first batch of the 500 vehicles it’s scheduled to receive over the next several weeks.
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In November, officials at Army Contracting Command requested that JLTV manufacturer Oshkosh manufacture 6,107 new vehicles under a $1.7 billion contract.
The Army and Marine Corps, which also plans on adopting the JLTV, have taken receipt of some 2,600 JLTVs so far, with plans to field about 50,000 vehicles by 2040.