DETROIT ARSENAL, Mich. — With a nod from the Army Futures Command, the Program Executive Office for Combat Support & Combat Service Support will explore the potential use of modified commercial off-the-shelf solutions for a new, common Tactical Wheeled Vehicle, or TWV Fleet.

The Army Requirements Oversight Council on July 30 approved the Common Tactical Truck (CTT) Abbreviated Capabilities Development Document, or A-CDD, which allows the PEO to begin a rapid prototyping effort to provide Army Transporters modernized capabilities while incorporating as much commonality with the commercial trucking industry as possible.

Alvin Bing, the Army’s product manager, Heavy Tactical Vehicles, PEO CS&CSS, explained that dovetailing the CTT program’s desired capabilities with commercial trucking industry research and development projects is a winning proposition.

“Aligning CTT with industry R&D efforts enables rapid and continuous integration of future technologies that can significantly reduce obsolescence issues,” Bing said. “With CTT, the Army wants as much industry involvement as possible so we can increase competition while at the same time, leveraging momentum gained through industry’s rapidly advancing fields of driver safety systems, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, improved fuel economy and vehicle electrification, off-road mobility, and predictive maintenance. This will allow the Army to modernize at the pace of industry by integrating new technologies with minimal cost.”

Within the Army’s TWV Fleet, the CTT falls between the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles and the Heavy Equipment Transporter. CTT seeks to bolster TWV mission roles currently performed by vehicles in the Army’s heavy fleet.

“As the Army’s CTT acquisition lead, our intent is to procure a HTV Family of Vehicles to replace the M915/M1088 Tractors, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, and Palletized Load System with a commercial-based CTT designed with a modular truck platform,” Bing continued. “This will mitigate future obsolescence, leverage best commercial practices, lower procurement costs through commercial economies of scale, and take advantage of interchangeable repair parts across the fleet — resulting in streamlined supply chains and reduced total lifecycle costs.”

According to Don Overton of the Army Futures Command Sustainment Capabilities Integration Directorate’s Requirements Division, ultimately, this effort will inform a future CTT Capability Development Document, which will outline the final, approved operational requirements for a common system that will deliver capability meeting overall operational performance criteria.

“In terms of capability gaps in this portion of the TWV fleet in support of Multi-Domain Operations, we’ve reached design maturity, and without a holistic overhaul, we can’t overcome design limitations and will simultaneously drive operations and sustainment costs to untenable levels. Commercial technologies and economies of scale exist that will help the Army close those gaps and address the increasing age of the current HTV fleet. Now is the right time to modernize with a Common Tactical Truck in support of MDO,” he emphasized.

CTT’s desired characteristics include:
Drive by wire and active safety
Mission roles
Commonality with industry
Digitization (autonomy, prognostics)
Demand reduction
Force protection
Survivability
Sustainment

Industry representatives who are interested in possibly participating in CTT should be on the lookout for announcements and requests for information on SAM.gov in the coming months, Bing said. His acquisition team anticipates holding industry one-on-one meetings tentatively slated for mid-to-late Fiscal Year 2022.

Bing’s team plans to award Other Transaction Authority-based contracts in Fiscal Year 2023 to three vendors to produce multiple prototypes each. OTAs are designed to help the government speed capability to the field vs. traditional contracting methods.

Soldier Touch Points will be leveraged throughout the competitive prototyping phase. These assessments are important ways to incorporate valuable Warfighter feedback into the acquisition program, thereby providing Army Transporters the optimal CTT solution. Currently, the notional plan is for prototype runoff testing to beginning in late Fiscal Year 2023, followed by a down select to a Federal Acquisition Regulation-based production contract in Fiscal Year 2025.

CTT fielding is projected to begin in Fiscal Year 2028.

By Rae Higgins, Program Executive Office, Combat Support & Combat Service Support

YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz. — U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground and its constituent test centers test virtually every piece of equipment in the ground combat arsenal in extreme environments to ensure it will work wherever in the world American forces are serving.

To ensure gear can survive the unforgiving rigors of jungle warfare, the Army relies on Tropic Regions Test Center (TRTC), which conducts realistic evaluations in a variety of tropical locales.

Though the deserts of Southwest Asia have been the most common location of American military involvement for nearly twenty years, the majority of the world’s conflicts have occurred in tropical areas, which have ground conditions from dense jungles to savannas with 20-foot tall grasses. Testing equipment under inhospitable tropic conditions provides insights that may never be discovered in an environmental chamber. Will muddy, biomass-laden jungle terrain destroy the integrity of wheels and tires on a combat vehicle, for instance?

One recent TRTC test involved the Polaris MRZR, a military version of the popular off-road vehicle that American forces have used in places like Afghanistan in recent years.

“It is not as comfortable, but it is sturdier and heavier with a rolling cage,” said Carlos Mora, TRTC test officer. “It is more mission-oriented.”

The MRZR under test was outfitted with Tweels instead of standard tires. The Tweel, produced by Michelin, is an airless radial tire designed to work like an ordinary pneumatic tire. In addition to the obvious advantage of never having to worry about flat tires, utilizing Tweels has second order effects that are useful for Soldiers.

“One reason for this technology is to reduce weight on those small vehicles so you don’t have to carry a spare tire, jacks, or materials to fix a puncture,” said Mora.

The Tweels also have the ability to conform to multiple different terrain types, and can last three times as long as standard tires. Putting the Tweels through their paces on land deep within the jungle of the nation of Suriname that TRTC have utilized in previous vehicle tests gave the evaluation a particularly realistic operational flavor.

“All of these old mining roads and logging roads were the perfect scenario for the vehicle,” said Mora. “The customer also liked the composition of the soils.”

There was also the added benefit of microclimates and terrain features that are only sometimes associated with the tropics.

“We added a portion of savanna, which is a sandy terrain with small brushes,” said Mora. “It turned out to be very demanding.”

Tweels are also designed to power through serious damage for far longer than even run-flat pneumatic tires. Using a drill bit, testers damaged the Tweels to simulate as if they had been shot prior to some of the evaluations.

By necessity, TRTC provides substantially more assistance to its customers than other test centers, which are located in the United States and do not require complicated visa and country clearances from various embassies and the military for American visitors.

“We always have the support of the embassy and the national police, so everything we do is sanctioned and approved by the foreign minister and the U.S. embassy,” said Ernest Hugh, TRTC director. “That’s part of the process we take care of to ensure the visit is seamless for the customer.”

The American embassies and associated military groups within each delegation assist TRTC in securing the necessary permissions to conduct testing in a variety of countries.

“We work closely with the United States embassies in all of the host nations in which we conduct tests,” said Hugh.