Two of the 3 vehicles within the Army’s “Ultra Light Vehicle” program have now entered survivability testing in Nevada and Maryland, to assess both their blast and ballistic protection capability.
The third vehicle remains on the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, called TARDEC, for testing there.
The TARDEC began development of 3 Ultra Light Vehicles, or ULVs, in fall 2011, on the request of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While the ULV isn’t fielded as a combat vehicle, it does function a research and development platform with a view to ultimately yield data that may be utilized by other TARDEC agencies and program managers, in addition to sister services to develop their very own vehicles and gear one day.
“It’s all about sharing the information,” said Mike Karaki, the ULV’s program manager. “If we’ve a capability to share the knowledge internally within TARDEC, and externally in the program managers and program executive offices, and beyond that with other government agencies, we’ll try and do this. It’s helping shape and inform future programs.”
Karaki said the ULV program will help development of survivability in future vehicles, and can also help development of different hybrid vehicles to boot.
“You be capable to use anything and everything you are able to from this program to assist reduce the duplication of efforts at some point,” he said.
The ULV is a hybrid vehicle that incorporates lightweight advanced material armor, lightweight wheels and tires and other automotive systems, blast-mitigating underbody technology and advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment inside.
“We tried to push the envelope with regards to state-of-the-art and out-of-the-box materials inside the entire development process,” said Karaki.
The vehicle, from design to delivery, took only 16 months, Karaki said.
“We show there are some successes within the rapid design, development, fabrication and integration of the hassle,” Karaki said. “It’s doable. It’s high risk and high reward. Are you able to do it in a rapid timeframe? We’ve proven we will try this.”
The ULV is hybrid vehicle powered by a diesel engine that drives an electrical generator. That generator in turn powers two electric motors that turn the wheels. Two electric motors provides redundancy should some of the motors fail.
Karaki said choosing a hybrid system came from the necessity to develop a more survivable vehicle for Soldiers. He said the contractor was interested by easy methods to make the vehicle perform better in a blast event, and came to the belief that a hybrid was the simpler choice.
Because this is a hybrid vehicle, it has not one of the standard equipment underneath the vehicle. It features instead a “clean underbody” that makes it more in a position to withstanding something like an explosion from an improvised explosive device.
“If you retain less equipment, accessories, systems underneath the vehicle, and also you allow the underbody geometry to do what it must do — have a clean underbody — it is possible for you to to enhance your probabilities of having the ability to direct a blast clear of the vehicle,” he said.
The primary customer for the ULV vehicle, that is a test vehicle, is the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This system came with four research objectives, which might be a 4,500 pound payload, a vehicle weight of 14,000 pounds, protection this is equivalent to the currently fielded mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, and a cost of $250,000 each for a hypothetical 5,000-unit production run.
Karaki said this system is meeting or is predicted to fulfill those objectives.
“On paper, the stuff upfront, the scale, the load, the pricetag, the time-frame, we checked those boxes,” he said. “The testing and evaluation of most of these advanced survivability systems are in process as we speak.”
Two of 3 vehicles are undergoing survivability testing now. The third vehicle is in Warren, Mich., at TARDEC’s Ground Systems Power and effort Laboratory undergoing automotive testing and to assess its hybrid electric setup. Karaki said eventually both ULVs undergoing survivability testing may be destroyed as portion of that testing. The third vehicle, the only at TARDEC, can be kept as a test platform.
The ULV isn’t a replacement for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program or the Humvee. It’s an experimental vehicle used for testing purposes. This system will wrap up in fiscal year 2014.
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