By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Whatever comes after military-grade Humvees will be something more akin to the popular video game known as HALO. The early October concept video release of the Ground-X Vehicle Technology Program (The GXV-T Program) shows a futuristic ground vehicle design that has more of a look and feel of a small and fast space rover than an earthbound military vehicle.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has stated that the GXV-T Program’s main purpose is to replace the “more armor” paradigm that currently exists within the U.S. Army.
DARPA Program manager Kevin Massey said, “GXV-T’s goal is not just to improve or replace one particular vehicle—it’s about breaking the ‘more armor’ paradigm and revolutionizing protection for all armored fighting vehicles.”
The GXV-T Program has a start date of award next April and is set to last a duration of two years.
The Program will seek to accomplish:
- Greater usability- intended for all soldiers with little or no training on its operation.
- Auto-pilot, terrain classification and mapping system features.
- Layered protection system to defend against IEDs and other threats.
- Less armor, more threat detection avoidance, evasion and superior agility.
- Extreme speed.
- Adaptive wheel configurations and omnidirectional movement changes in 3 dimensions.
- Active repositioning of armor.
- Reduction of detectable signatures, including: visible, infrared, acoustic and electromagnetic.
As of now, the Humvee is threatened by the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) Project, which provides a new in-service capability of a light rapid armored vehicle with greater combat survivability than the Humvee. Nevertheless, the principle is one of armoring a Humvee-like design in size, shape, appearance and armor (even with light weight aims). In some ways they are similar projects but the GXV-T Project appears to be a next step process—much more ambitious.
DARPA GXV-T technical goals include:
- Reduce vehicle size and weight by 50 percent
- Reduce onboard crew needed to operate vehicle by 50 percent
- Increase vehicle speed by 100 percent
- Access 95 percent of terrain
Comments are closed.