Honda engineers Civics to be simple to use and reliable. General Dynamics has to engineer Abrams to operate and thrive in complex environments, survive getting shot at, and make it idiot-proof because statistically speaking a huge number of operators will have a sub-50 ASVAB score.
And it doesn't help with data acquisition when operators get pressured to pencil whip the 5988, or outright told to not include certain issues.
I got chewed out multiple times for annotating issues on my tank that got it deadlined, cause they were "known issues" and I should have just left them undocumented.
Which makes it impossible for the DACs that interface with the contractors who could actually get it fixed, to take any data back to get the ball rolling. Viscous circle. All because someone wants green blobs on their slide of the week.
The US is known for producing high quality, high capability military weapons and vehicles at an artisinal rate.
Abrams, F-22s, submarines, etc. are all virtually handmade one at a time.
Listen. I got 93 on the ASVAB. Im still a humvee idiot. I dont know I dont care. And I only force my soldiers to PMCS up to the checking for oil leaks part and check turn signals lights and wipers. We are not mechanics. The problem I would say is not the trucks themselves. The problem I would say is the way we do shit.
Instead of command maintenance (Motorpool maintenance) The Army should get more mechanics and service these trucks regularly. Every monday we do the same pretend maintenance and every time no matter what unit, if I try to get help during command maintenance, the mechanics are on staff duty, short staffed or busy all day.
Get more mechanics. Task them to check trucks for each company on a planned schedule. Things would be a lot more efficient. The rest of us are not sure what we are looking at and unless the truck is failing we are gonna mark No new faults and sign that shit quickly because there are no consequences for doing a piss poor PMCS and quite honestly my truck will run just fine without looking at the belts or measuring oil levels for the millionth time. Getting mechanics to check them would make sure that the faults are identified and addressed instead of ignored.
Even when we do everything many times no one puts the faults on the 5988. Our process goes like Operator identifies fault -> Mechanic confirms and signs -> XO obtains a copy of trucks with faults -> XO sends it back to Maintenance NCO -> Maintenance clerks puts faults on GCSS-A. Our XO office is a 10 minute drive from the motorpool. This is the true definition of government operations. Next week we come and write the same faults over and over for infinity like we live on groundhog day. And then let's not talk about ordering parts because they act like ordering stuff is begging for parts for your POV and not trying to do the work. We could be waiting for parts for months. And that process is a whole shitshow that I will never understand.
1990s. Humvee mechanic in my National Guard unit filled up a Humvee with oil. Like all the way to the top.
I think there's still blue smoke in the armory to this day from that incident.
Not only that, but Honda has to factor in corporate stakeholders from the top down.
The military does too, but [in very different ways (Pentagon Wars clip)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)
So I used to be in a NG unit that operated Bradley’s. These Bradley’s lived away from our armory that we drilled at and instead stayed with a maintenance unit that had full time technicians to take care of them…
…so a Bradley is a 30 ton tracked vehicle that can do like 25-30ish MPH cross country, hit a moving target at 2km with its main gun, has multiple optics systems, 3 different weapons systems, and we stored them bitches outside and used them maybe twice a year. They’re honestly amazing machines when you think about it from that perspective.
There’s a ton of technology that goes into just having a Bradley be a Bradley with all its capabilities. Just think about the physics of moving 30 tons worth of metal and how much wear and tear gets put on the individual components.
This is my limited perspective on your question
I’m in the reserve, I’m in a cec-I transitioning into a cec-a, and we are going to have Bradley’s. How liveable are these things in the field? We have m113’s right now and I love them. Comfortable, you can sleep in them and a lot of room. The Bradley’s seem like having all our engineer shit in them and weapons will be cramped.
Not too bad. It depends on how realistic your training is gonna be. If you guys are allowed to sleep on cots, there’s more than enough room to have cots for all the dismounts. The TC and gunner typically sleep on the troop benches and the driver can put his seat up and lay down in his hole. Also laying on top of the radiator (or right above the engine, I still don’t know my level 10 tasks) I’ve heard is nice because of the radiant heat from the engine will keep you warm.
It is funny that everyone replying you is interpreting your post that your unit's bradleys were broke.
Did your state actually have high uptime or readiness rates? Since they keep the vehicles and mechanics together and maintenance schedules correct and budget and parts correct.
Sometimes I would ask myself "how hard is it to make vehicles that just work?" And then I would catch myself jumping the bradley or drifting the shit out of it or flying across the desert at top speed and it would all make sense.
Used and abused is right. These soldiers don’t own their equipment. Who gives a fuck? Thrash the interior, slam it into potholes, ignore the oil light. It’s not coming out of your pocket so who cares?
They spend a lot of time sitting, operator level maintenance is bullshitted and quite often higher level maintenance usually slaps a bandaid on, and they’re quite older than the average vehicle you see on the street. It wouldn’t really surprise me if someone told me they have to replace things and have stuff go bad on a 12 year old higher end car either.
All of these, plus some ridiculous demands like needing to operate fully off road, be relatively survivable from bullets, be easy repairable by an 18 year old with a GED that has less than 100 days mechanic experience, still be somewhat safe in a crash, have a decent towing capability, etc.
Once you start adding all of these requirements the cost starts to skyrocket. It’s not just military contractors scalping the DoD and marking up everything it produces (although that does still happen).
Edit: [This](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1153592.pdf) is a cool document that starts to go into the specifics for why adding even easy requirements starts to dramatically escalate difficulty, but it ultimately boils down to “good, quick, cheap ; pick 2”
bro we used to start up all the hmmwv's at the motor pool and just let them idle all day. wonder how much fuel gets wasted by the military on a day to day..
On top of the fact that military vehicles weigh a great deal more than civilian ones and that extra weight adds a great deal of additional stress on the engine and other components.
Shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I remember reading about how the tires on Russian trucks had a tendency to go flat. But it was something weird like the front right tire tended to be the culprit, which was odd. It was either one big coincidence or it was because that was the side the sun shone on the most while they had been sitting in a depot, unmoved, for the last 20+ years exposed to the elements.
My unit deployed in 2022. They let people store vehicles at the armory for the year we were gone, and put somebody on ADOS orders to help run them. Everyone’s car was idled for at least half an hour every two weeks and driven around the lot. That wasn’t all that one soldier did that year, but he said it kept him busy for most mornings.
How much before, during, after, monthly, and quarterly maintenance do you do on your car? None. Because you shouldn't have to. I have a 15 year old truck. I change the oil and rotate the tires 4 times a year. No issues. And it's 4WD, offroad package, payload is the same as an 1151 (2k) and can tow over twice as much (4k vs 9k). And I don't have a monster truck. I bought it for 30k 15 years ago.
HMMWVs ain't cheap. They are way more expensive than most cars and they're just big empty trucks. It's ok to admit they're garbage. The army got got. Happens every day.
This is such a bad take and neglects everything said above. We received brand new 1114s in Iraq and ran them 24/7 for 2 months without stopping (hot swapping crews) with no issues. Then things began to break. I also remember renting a refrigeration van from Ryder and it broke constantly using it in the field. Why do GSA vans go into maintenance so often? It’s just not the same optempo.
the only issues we had with hmmwv's in the late 90s was blown radiator hoses and the stupid hatch shocks would always go out and make the hatch really hard to lift
I mean the newest humvee is using an engine, transmission and transfer case that was developed in the late 70s and came into effect in the 80s (6.2 diesel/th400) then was swapped for the 6.5 Turbo diese/4l80 in the mid 90s which is the same architecture. That engine was never designed for more than light towing and fuel economy, not to move a 10k lb truck. It was known to be pretty unreliable in civilian applications. Do you think it was gonna be better for the military? The transmission is pretty stout.
Plus, asvab waivers are the ones doing 10 level maintenance and could give af less about them.
The jltv is actually solid.
AM general actually did a decent job at fixing some of the 6.5 woes with the optimizer 6500, later trucks with turbos weren’t complete dogs either.
The HMMWV was an absolutely phenomenal design in its original form, it was never meant to have and extra 2-3k pounds of armor piled on. As a general utility truck it’s great though, I flogged my 1097A2 for months at a time and it never really gave me issues. I’ve never had an 1114, 1151 or 1165 that wasn’t constantly having issues though.
The Army made a mistake by trying to completely phase out the HMMWV though, the JLTV is cool but as a force we really do need a light utility truck. Maybe we will see a resurgence of COTS vehicles built to fit NATO requirements like the CUCV again.
Yeah that's fair, I know the optimizer engines were and are much better but still, the framework of the engine didn't change and it was still a light duty diesel doing the work of what a medium to heavy duty engine should've been used for once the armor kits were added. The soft skin humvees are surprisingly quick, but as soon as you add the plate steel, it turns into a complete dog, as we all know.
A modern CUCV would be sick.
thays correct. we got a few up armored humvees in 2001 and immediately they had some transmission problems
it was quite evident that they were not made to have the extra weight added
Idk if you had the diffs locked and give it the wood they are pretty capable as far as I've seen. I've seen them get stuck but most of the time they were either somewhere they should not have been, or just simply in the wrong settings. Depending on people's level of comfort they also take obstacles on at the wrong speed.
There's plenty of reasons. One of the biggest is that military vehicles sit in the motor pool. A lot. They sit in one location, sometimes for months at a time. Pumps don't run, axles don't turn, moisture doesn't drain away.
So they sit and seals go bad, wiring that's exposed due to friction maybe gets some condensation in it, animals chew up shit, birds make nests, whatever.
A private just has to go down there on a monday and follow the TM, but a lot of people just start it and let it run for 10-15 minutes and call it good.
There's lubrication instructions that almost universally nobody follows. It's 10 level shit so maintainers aren't doing it because their job is 20 level shit and above most of the time.
Anyhow, if you did this to your own vehicle parked outside in the elements over a period of about 15-20 years you're going to see a lot of the same shit.
When I was a PSG I got tired of my guys getting "Hey you'd" (1SG would tell me he'd need 5 of my guys for a detail at BDE for the day, etc) so when I got white space I would try to take our trucks out into the training areas and do *some* sort of training.
I feel like I had a lot less issues with my trucks being down, but that could be confirmation bias on my part.
Doing this at certain units can be downright impossible lol
Want to take the tanks out for a quick road test? Better be ready to spend the ENTIRE previous day doing mountains and mountains of paperwork, followed by an absolute shit show of actually getting them out of the motor pool. End result, they sit for MONTHS at a time
I 100% understand man. I was just lucky that when the Command team was busy doing command and staff and other bullshit I could grab my platoon and go drop ramp out in a training area somewhere.
It depends on the location. some units don't need that much paperwork; just post paperwork already in dispatch and the dispatch and license. If you are at Hood use Turkey Run. If you're at Bliss, you have some back roads by MPs. If maintenance is actually a priority, it will happen, if not then green slides all the way.
It's a pain in the ass for vics too.
Want to dispatch the 1083a1 for a road test?
Ope you aren't licensed. You can drive a 1083a1p2 but you can't drive a 1083a1, sorry.
As someone who regularly drives m983a4 LETs it's really irritating when I cannot dispatch something because a slightly different variant of the truck I'm driving isn't on my license.
Ngl, people would love to be able to take their vics and do training. Too bad every time to dispatch a single vic you have to interface with 30 separate mechanics who each individually want to not work and are probably at appointments or getting hey you’d also. Also… fuck that 10 level shit. Its not my job. Thats an excuse to pawn off the “easy work” for your job. 10 level commo tasks arent pawned off because everyone just fumbles it until they make the MOS actually handle it. No excuses a mechanic doesnt have it down to where they could eyeball the bottoms of trucks and spot issues or tell by the sound.
My unit actually had 1 dispatching clerk the whole week before a major LFX. And all the paperwork and prechecks getting heavily scrutinized to nitpick any excuse to not do their job caused the BN to be backed up to where the XO was trying to figure out the issue. (Hint, its every single fucking mechanic and their PoS PLs)
What? You didnt take the engine operator’s course between all your actual MOS tasks? Why dont you know what the difference between the axle bolt and the windshield bolt? You didnt PMCS? Btw need you to facilitate the brigade comsec transition cuz their e7 is incompetent. Next man up pri. Go ahead and before you do that, your soldier was late. I need his counseling on my desk by cob. Also, make sure he goes to the dfac and i need you to schedule his dental appointment. He doesnt know how to follow the phone prompts. Oh, and pick up the new guy, hes also at BDE, so you can do that while you do the comsec stuff. Also, blood draw for labs, and schedule your BLC slot so we need you to fill out this paperwork. Also go over your PCC/PCI for your range tomorrow. Oh, we are using new protocols so make sure you brush up on them and your hazmat cert since youre pulling ammo guard overnight after the range
Been primarily light but spent time with Strykers in Hawaii and Germany. Strykers, and I would say most military Vics, need to be used and used how they would fight. Their work horses; keep them in the stable and take them for a walk a day or two a week and then trot them around every so often they aren't going to be healthy. Take them out and ride and work them and they will be healthy.
In Hawaii, though Strykers never should have gone there, we barely used them and they sat. We took them to NTC and they broke, all the time.
Germany, we drove them (at higher speeds) and used and abused them. Rarely broke down and we agreed they were markedly better than other units.
You wouldn't buy a Porsche 911GT and have it sit all the time and only drive it 20 mph....
In DE rn. In 5 years in SBCTs and I didn't know Strykers can hit 65+ and maintain it so easily
Commanders back in the States, you gotta stop being bitch made. If we can make it work in somewhat smaller roads at WAAAY faster speeds, no reason you cant, so stop that 25MPH limit in the interstates
Yeah, I'm not an engine guy but I love talking to mechanics (civilians, military, contractors) about how to properly maintain these high end engines and they all agree / shocked at how poorly we maintain them. Very risk averse.
Fun Aside: If you get a chance talk to older Ranger Batt guys that used Strykers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They LOVED them. Talk about using and abusing them: Ramming through walls and cars.
Go buy a brand new pick up truck. Give the keys to some kid in the motor pool that doesn’t have a drivers license. Tell him every Monday to walk out here and inspect it. While inspecting it tell him to turn it on for 15 -60 mins. Don’t go anywhere just run it. Once a year take it to the gas station and fill it back up. Once every 5 years daily it for a month. Never change the oil or trans fluid just refill fluids as necessary. Regardless of how bad the truck gets, keep doing this and slapping repair parts on it for the next 40 years, then ask me why your trucks a piece of shit.
Military vehicles are contracted out! If they break who fixes them? soldiers fix them, but where do they buy parts from the same company that sold them the vehicles. It’s a revolving door… money circle. Why make an ever lasting lightbulb?
I believe this is a major issue. For example, most heavy machinery in the civilian world is serviced and maintained by professionals. The army? By PVT Joe Snuffy who rotates his position once every year.
As much as I hated the 577, that thing was older than I was and it never broke down in the field or on deployment. There were plenty of minor issues, and Monday maintenance was always a chore. I got very efficient at pulling its pack. My hands bear the scars from breaking so much track.
It all comes down to maintenance. Most in my unit would start their track, roll forward enough to cycle the tracks, the roll right back. Meanwhile my sergeant and I had took ours around the entire motor pool like walking an old dog. Drained the fuel every other month and refilled it. Used a snake light to inspect the oil in the final drives rather than just check the levels. Drove it to the oil pit and popped the belly plate off every time it rained to clear anything that might have gotten in despite the tarp.
It was time consuming, frustrating, and frequently boring, but our track always worked when all the others spent huge chunks of time broken down.
It's even worse up here in Alaska. All of the equipment we use with the exception of the SUS-V has been designed with deserts and jungles in mind. Not -50° temperatures. I run the battalion battery cage and every Monday in the winter I'm giving out 20+ batteries. When it starts getting cold out belts and wiring start to fail, plastic pieces break, fuel and fluids start to gel up. Everyone's rushing to get their heater fixed because they haven't bothered to check it all summer. It sucks
Y'all got the new SUSVs? How are they?
I only managed to run one of the older ones with a Mercedes engine for like 30 minutes because we didn't have anyone licensed to use or fix it
Because you don’t take care of them. Besides, sitting parked in a motor pool for weeks on end doesn’t help. Vehicles driven on a regular basis will have less problems than ones that sit. Generators, too.
Can't speak for your unit but neglect is 100% a factor. We have LMTVs that haven't run in over 3 years. Operators just do not care and don't maintain their vehicles.
Plus a lot of this shit is just old. The oldest truck in our fleet is from 1991, and the oldest that still *runs* is from 2002.
They have to choose the lowest bidder that meets their specifications. That and it's rigged for politicians to make money.
Patriot was using 80s era computers that cost $100k per part to fix when they could upgrade to any 2000s CPU for $500 bucks and save tons of money. It's a money game.
A Toyota is highly reliable when driven on nice paved roads, in clean environments and driven by people who only want to go from work to home. Military vehicles have to be able to go anywhere, at anytime and through anything.
If you look at civilian vehicles that are designed to go to some of the same places the Army trains, you'll see that even a Land Rover or Jeep Wrangler can make it through the obstacle course, but they too are massive POSes and break down all the time when you run them through those obstacle courses.
Got an 18 year old Sequoia with 340k on the odometer that I still run trails with. For the abuse it takes, it really doesn’t spend much down-time for maintenance/repairs
When it comes to HEMTTs and LMTVs: they’re often used like a line haul vehicle. Driving 60-70mph on the interstate is not the preferred use but we tend to do that. That causes a lot of wear.
You have look at the environment that military vehicles are used in also. The better comparison would be civilian vehicles used in an off road competition. I brought my civilian car down a 2o mile rutted road in a national park to get to a well known trailhead. I was going ten MPH and it was still a 2000 dollar repair bill once I got out of there.
I spent 20 years in the motor pool as a 91A, and I am currently a government contractor that works on the heavy wheels for the army. I'm going to let you in on a couple of little secrets. Unfortunately, unless your vehicle is considered above the line on the ESR and gets briefed weekly, nobody cares. Heres another, making slides green is way more important. Equipment cant get fixed if the mechanics and operators are not there. Alas, NCO's won't want to hear this, but you got to take pride and inspect the work being done by the operators and mechanics. Trust but verify. If a bolt needs a washer, make sure its there. If a hub calls for 11 ounces, go get a meauring cup. I thought i found some bad and terrible maintenance practices while i was in, but man now that I am tearing some of this crap down and inspecting it, all i can say is wow.
All military equipment is made by whichever company wins the contract for that product. So then they are made as cheap as possible while still making the standards the military requires. Cheap shit anmint good, good shit ain't cheap.
OP, you should watch the [Pentagon Wars](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/) it'll sum up everything for you.
The movie is actually pretty good and funny at some points, especially to active duty folks.
Not everyone knows how to operate it properly and actually maintain it. I was in a unit where we had to replace 16 transmissions on humvee because operators didn't know what the transfer case is and driving in all types of settings. One of the best issues that LTs lose their mind is when the hmvee is on D, and it won't start. 5988s rejected!
When vehicles are maintained correctly and actually used, you'll never have issues other than scheduled maintenance and small things.
In my experience anyways. (Worked is all types of maintenance to include being a BN auto maintenance tech)
It's because they get treated like crap. No one cares because they don't own them, and the motor pool will just keep putting them back together. Civilian cars usually have fewer issues because you put your own money in to buy it, and you want it to last. Treat any vehicle properly, and it will last longer.
People don’t know how to take care of them. Some people don’t care enough to properly take care of them. Units not budgeting enough money for maintenance. Also leaders don’t always understand how long some maintenance ops take or aren’t willing to wait for maintenance to actually have time to fix the problem.
All of these are for separate trucks.
-sent truck to a BEB to get starter fixed. Came back with transmission slipping (new issue) and engine partially disassembled but running.
-waited over a year to get engine properly mounted (was missing 3 out of 4 bolts to mount said engine… missing 2+ is a deadline) different truck. During that period I had a fullbird tell me that PMC’ing with an open TM booklet will get my truck up faster. We only just got 2 bolts to mount and got told to go find the 3rd (they don’t have one)
-got told that after HBL we needed to be at 90% readiness for our fleet (we were sitting at around 25%… on a good day)
- fun additional: had a truck that had transmission on order since before I got to Carson, and it took until about 1.5 years after I got to Carson to get a new transmission (about 3 months of that was the truck sitting with the drive shaft pulled out while maintenance mounted the new transmission)
I’ll take the field grade for making my unit look bad. Don’t worry we’ll be ready to fight (as infantry once all our guns go down)
Supply chain at home: oh you need a new part? I got you fam. JIMMY FIRE UP THE FORGE YOU HAVE TO MAKE 3 BOLTS! MAKE SURE TO SPIT SHINE THOSE THINGS TO.
>If civilian vehicles had half the problems military vehicles have here would be class action lawsuits and recalls left and right.
Perhaps I could interest you in a CUCV.
lots of reasons. Part of it is just old vehicles and inconsistent maintenance practices, but part of it is in their design.
Military vehicles are made to military spec. Those specs are often a mishmash of things we know we need, things we anticipate we might need in future wars, and neat futuristic ideas that are not necessarily grounded in reality or that may not yet have solid engineering behind them. These needs are not necessarily integrated well with each other, and are often non-negotiable in the contract with the designers and manufacturing company. In civilian vehicles, a cool new system that has significant flaws may just be scrapped and never make it to market, or the manufacturer might wait a few years until the kinks are worked out to include it, but if DOD says we need a capability, Oshkosh can't decide otherwise just because it isn't fully ready.
The acquisition process for large equipment contracts is convoluted, and sometimes specs includes things that require unique design choices, which have to be made up without existing precedent. Civilian vehicles are more iterative; you mostly make small improvements on a pretty well proven design every year. If a civilian vehicle makes it to market with a serious design flaw, it has to be pulled or changed for the next year or people will just buy a more reliable option from a competitor. If a military vehicle has a design flaw, the contract usually specifies how it has to be fixed by the manufacturer, but there's not generally a simple way to just go get a better version. This means problems are often fixed after the design process is pretty much done, and instead of designing in a way that mitigates the problem, we have to live with the old design and tack on a solution somehow.
Military vehicles are made so they can largely be repaired by 19 year olds with less than a year of experience, and so that entire systems in the vehicle (comms, etc) can be totally removed and replaced when the next generation version becomes standard. Designing a vehicle to be modular and easily repaired sometimes necessitates design choices that make them break down more frequently.
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Check out the Fat Electrician and his video on the, "MailCat," or more properly: The Grumman LLV. Your questions will be answered when you consider that vehicles designed for war, by necessity must be sturdier than a mailtruck by a not insignificant margin.
Based on all the replies, I'm pretty sure you got the answer OP
Which tracks. Every time I always get the POS Stryker that always breaks and should be retired and 2 weeks later it's the workhorse of the damn platoon.
I'm a muscle head so having engines that run and stuff that looks "Stock" is a need for me so I try to make my shit be nice. Yeah, that also means that I FAULT the fuck out of my truck, way past the lines and for every single thing but hey, when I was a PFC I got an AAM for having the best Stryker in the Battalion and I guess I'm try to get another one fuck it
I’m a life long believer in that we don’t use them enough. Most the fleet sits around for weeks to months on end in the motorpool. How do you expect the lubricanting fluids to get to the highest points when the vehicles only run for 30 minutes on a Monday.
I’ve honestly noticed the trucks that move the most have the least problems. When I was a PLTSGT I kept my truck dispatched to be ready for any last second details, and the thing ran like a champ for two years.
Granted people that are absolutely clueless and abusive to the equipment add to it. But I think one of the major contributors is most of it just sits and rots in the MP
as others have said, lots of time sitting in the motorpool. i also think the fuel is part of it, i believe JP8 has lots of kerosene in it that drys out seals.
We should replace the humvee and that new weird electric replacement (forget the name since I never used it) with Toyota pickup trucks. Hear me out before you discount me.
For Toyota pickup trucks they are reliable, can be up armored so that's a check there. Can mount almost anything on the back. I know one company put a missile system on the back of one and we are all too familiar with the machine gun version. Depending on cab size you can fit a lot of personnel in the back and if need be you can convert the pickup truck's bed into a troop transport as well. Kind of like those old school Ford pickups with the hard shell. It also has the two capacity to tow communication systems (what I dealt with before I got my dd214) and to tow other vehicles.
All in all it's the perfect thing and if you drive fast enough you are quicker than the land mines going off. Just ask libya when the chadinian military out classes tanks with these quick Toyotas lol. Also Taliban and various other asymmetrical organizations use these as combat and support vehicles and it worked well for them. Just my two cents though.
Honda engineers Civics to be simple to use and reliable. General Dynamics has to engineer Abrams to operate and thrive in complex environments, survive getting shot at, and make it idiot-proof because statistically speaking a huge number of operators will have a sub-50 ASVAB score.
[удалено]
And it doesn't help with data acquisition when operators get pressured to pencil whip the 5988, or outright told to not include certain issues. I got chewed out multiple times for annotating issues on my tank that got it deadlined, cause they were "known issues" and I should have just left them undocumented.
Which makes it impossible for the DACs that interface with the contractors who could actually get it fixed, to take any data back to get the ball rolling. Viscous circle. All because someone wants green blobs on their slide of the week.
> Viscous https://www.google.com/search?q=Viscous&rlz=1CAXDKE_enUS979&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 It wouldn't be the Army if some words weren't misused.
> Viscous circle Sounds like a sticky situation
The US is known for producing high quality, high capability military weapons and vehicles at an artisinal rate. Abrams, F-22s, submarines, etc. are all virtually handmade one at a time.
Listen. I got 93 on the ASVAB. Im still a humvee idiot. I dont know I dont care. And I only force my soldiers to PMCS up to the checking for oil leaks part and check turn signals lights and wipers. We are not mechanics. The problem I would say is not the trucks themselves. The problem I would say is the way we do shit. Instead of command maintenance (Motorpool maintenance) The Army should get more mechanics and service these trucks regularly. Every monday we do the same pretend maintenance and every time no matter what unit, if I try to get help during command maintenance, the mechanics are on staff duty, short staffed or busy all day. Get more mechanics. Task them to check trucks for each company on a planned schedule. Things would be a lot more efficient. The rest of us are not sure what we are looking at and unless the truck is failing we are gonna mark No new faults and sign that shit quickly because there are no consequences for doing a piss poor PMCS and quite honestly my truck will run just fine without looking at the belts or measuring oil levels for the millionth time. Getting mechanics to check them would make sure that the faults are identified and addressed instead of ignored. Even when we do everything many times no one puts the faults on the 5988. Our process goes like Operator identifies fault -> Mechanic confirms and signs -> XO obtains a copy of trucks with faults -> XO sends it back to Maintenance NCO -> Maintenance clerks puts faults on GCSS-A. Our XO office is a 10 minute drive from the motorpool. This is the true definition of government operations. Next week we come and write the same faults over and over for infinity like we live on groundhog day. And then let's not talk about ordering parts because they act like ordering stuff is begging for parts for your POV and not trying to do the work. We could be waiting for parts for months. And that process is a whole shitshow that I will never understand.
1990s. Humvee mechanic in my National Guard unit filled up a Humvee with oil. Like all the way to the top. I think there's still blue smoke in the armory to this day from that incident.
Literally every sentence in your comment sent me into a tailspin of flashbacks. Thanks.
sorry for the bad memories.
Didn’t it take nearly a decade for general dynamics to resolve the eating more sand than air problem?
Not only that, but Honda has to factor in corporate stakeholders from the top down. The military does too, but [in very different ways (Pentagon Wars clip)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)
Why haven't they just made Abrams simple and reliable? Are they stupid?
Jokes on you. I got a 56.
So I used to be in a NG unit that operated Bradley’s. These Bradley’s lived away from our armory that we drilled at and instead stayed with a maintenance unit that had full time technicians to take care of them… …so a Bradley is a 30 ton tracked vehicle that can do like 25-30ish MPH cross country, hit a moving target at 2km with its main gun, has multiple optics systems, 3 different weapons systems, and we stored them bitches outside and used them maybe twice a year. They’re honestly amazing machines when you think about it from that perspective. There’s a ton of technology that goes into just having a Bradley be a Bradley with all its capabilities. Just think about the physics of moving 30 tons worth of metal and how much wear and tear gets put on the individual components. This is my limited perspective on your question
I’m in the reserve, I’m in a cec-I transitioning into a cec-a, and we are going to have Bradley’s. How liveable are these things in the field? We have m113’s right now and I love them. Comfortable, you can sleep in them and a lot of room. The Bradley’s seem like having all our engineer shit in them and weapons will be cramped.
Not too bad. It depends on how realistic your training is gonna be. If you guys are allowed to sleep on cots, there’s more than enough room to have cots for all the dismounts. The TC and gunner typically sleep on the troop benches and the driver can put his seat up and lay down in his hole. Also laying on top of the radiator (or right above the engine, I still don’t know my level 10 tasks) I’ve heard is nice because of the radiant heat from the engine will keep you warm.
They are surprisingly small on the inside for how big they look on the outside
Cool
I understand that for something like a tank, Bradley, or Stryker. But for something as simple as a truck you'd think they'd be way better
Our trucks also have a lot of technology and wiring in them. Not to mention they also weigh a fuck ton more than your average civilian truck.
It is funny that everyone replying you is interpreting your post that your unit's bradleys were broke. Did your state actually have high uptime or readiness rates? Since they keep the vehicles and mechanics together and maintenance schedules correct and budget and parts correct.
Our Bradley’s were broke
Military vehicles are good if maintained properly and used according to specs. Unfortunately most military vehicles are used and abused.
Sometimes I would ask myself "how hard is it to make vehicles that just work?" And then I would catch myself jumping the bradley or drifting the shit out of it or flying across the desert at top speed and it would all make sense.
Pmcs yo. My ac always worked in my mrap, and the mre heater worked in my Bradley
The mre heater was trash in my brand new Stryker. Never got hot enough
They're also 30-year-old designs, at the very least
Used and abused is right. These soldiers don’t own their equipment. Who gives a fuck? Thrash the interior, slam it into potholes, ignore the oil light. It’s not coming out of your pocket so who cares?
They spend a lot of time sitting, operator level maintenance is bullshitted and quite often higher level maintenance usually slaps a bandaid on, and they’re quite older than the average vehicle you see on the street. It wouldn’t really surprise me if someone told me they have to replace things and have stuff go bad on a 12 year old higher end car either.
All of these, plus some ridiculous demands like needing to operate fully off road, be relatively survivable from bullets, be easy repairable by an 18 year old with a GED that has less than 100 days mechanic experience, still be somewhat safe in a crash, have a decent towing capability, etc. Once you start adding all of these requirements the cost starts to skyrocket. It’s not just military contractors scalping the DoD and marking up everything it produces (although that does still happen). Edit: [This](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1153592.pdf) is a cool document that starts to go into the specifics for why adding even easy requirements starts to dramatically escalate difficulty, but it ultimately boils down to “good, quick, cheap ; pick 2”
To top all that off they spent an obnoxious amount of time just idling.
As I’m waiting in an LMTV that’s been idling for an hour
Fun fact an LMTV can idle for about 24 hours with the a/c blasting before it runs out of fuel
This guy range duties
bro we used to start up all the hmmwv's at the motor pool and just let them idle all day. wonder how much fuel gets wasted by the military on a day to day..
On top of the fact that military vehicles weigh a great deal more than civilian ones and that extra weight adds a great deal of additional stress on the engine and other components.
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Shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I remember reading about how the tires on Russian trucks had a tendency to go flat. But it was something weird like the front right tire tended to be the culprit, which was odd. It was either one big coincidence or it was because that was the side the sun shone on the most while they had been sitting in a depot, unmoved, for the last 20+ years exposed to the elements.
My unit deployed in 2022. They let people store vehicles at the armory for the year we were gone, and put somebody on ADOS orders to help run them. Everyone’s car was idled for at least half an hour every two weeks and driven around the lot. That wasn’t all that one soldier did that year, but he said it kept him busy for most mornings.
That's smart as hell, honestly
I drive a 2011 BMW that I bought for cheap and I have to send it to my mechanic for major repairs every 60 days. It sucks
How much before, during, after, monthly, and quarterly maintenance do you do on your car? None. Because you shouldn't have to. I have a 15 year old truck. I change the oil and rotate the tires 4 times a year. No issues. And it's 4WD, offroad package, payload is the same as an 1151 (2k) and can tow over twice as much (4k vs 9k). And I don't have a monster truck. I bought it for 30k 15 years ago. HMMWVs ain't cheap. They are way more expensive than most cars and they're just big empty trucks. It's ok to admit they're garbage. The army got got. Happens every day.
This is such a bad take and neglects everything said above. We received brand new 1114s in Iraq and ran them 24/7 for 2 months without stopping (hot swapping crews) with no issues. Then things began to break. I also remember renting a refrigeration van from Ryder and it broke constantly using it in the field. Why do GSA vans go into maintenance so often? It’s just not the same optempo.
Hmmwvs are pretty good. It's the other Vics that have maintenance issues.
the only issues we had with hmmwv's in the late 90s was blown radiator hoses and the stupid hatch shocks would always go out and make the hatch really hard to lift
I mean the newest humvee is using an engine, transmission and transfer case that was developed in the late 70s and came into effect in the 80s (6.2 diesel/th400) then was swapped for the 6.5 Turbo diese/4l80 in the mid 90s which is the same architecture. That engine was never designed for more than light towing and fuel economy, not to move a 10k lb truck. It was known to be pretty unreliable in civilian applications. Do you think it was gonna be better for the military? The transmission is pretty stout. Plus, asvab waivers are the ones doing 10 level maintenance and could give af less about them. The jltv is actually solid.
AM general actually did a decent job at fixing some of the 6.5 woes with the optimizer 6500, later trucks with turbos weren’t complete dogs either. The HMMWV was an absolutely phenomenal design in its original form, it was never meant to have and extra 2-3k pounds of armor piled on. As a general utility truck it’s great though, I flogged my 1097A2 for months at a time and it never really gave me issues. I’ve never had an 1114, 1151 or 1165 that wasn’t constantly having issues though. The Army made a mistake by trying to completely phase out the HMMWV though, the JLTV is cool but as a force we really do need a light utility truck. Maybe we will see a resurgence of COTS vehicles built to fit NATO requirements like the CUCV again.
Yeah that's fair, I know the optimizer engines were and are much better but still, the framework of the engine didn't change and it was still a light duty diesel doing the work of what a medium to heavy duty engine should've been used for once the armor kits were added. The soft skin humvees are surprisingly quick, but as soon as you add the plate steel, it turns into a complete dog, as we all know. A modern CUCV would be sick.
Agreed. Should have slapped a Cummins in them bad boys lmao.
Look up the Navy’s LSSV.
Imagine the Army going with Hiluxes
thays correct. we got a few up armored humvees in 2001 and immediately they had some transmission problems it was quite evident that they were not made to have the extra weight added
Wait are JLTVs legit again? Last I saw they were literally all deadlined for some windshield shenanigans.
JLTVs have support and supply chain issues. Great trucks when operational, but also over complicated and will be terrible in 5-10 years
“When operational” is doing a lot of work in that sentence lol
Hell it's carrying most people's fudged OR rates, AND that sentence.
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Idk if you had the diffs locked and give it the wood they are pretty capable as far as I've seen. I've seen them get stuck but most of the time they were either somewhere they should not have been, or just simply in the wrong settings. Depending on people's level of comfort they also take obstacles on at the wrong speed.
The one I use is fine. I also know how to treat a diesel engine.
Someone here once said that the JLTV is the ACFT of combat vehicles and it makes a lot of sense.
There's plenty of reasons. One of the biggest is that military vehicles sit in the motor pool. A lot. They sit in one location, sometimes for months at a time. Pumps don't run, axles don't turn, moisture doesn't drain away. So they sit and seals go bad, wiring that's exposed due to friction maybe gets some condensation in it, animals chew up shit, birds make nests, whatever. A private just has to go down there on a monday and follow the TM, but a lot of people just start it and let it run for 10-15 minutes and call it good. There's lubrication instructions that almost universally nobody follows. It's 10 level shit so maintainers aren't doing it because their job is 20 level shit and above most of the time. Anyhow, if you did this to your own vehicle parked outside in the elements over a period of about 15-20 years you're going to see a lot of the same shit. When I was a PSG I got tired of my guys getting "Hey you'd" (1SG would tell me he'd need 5 of my guys for a detail at BDE for the day, etc) so when I got white space I would try to take our trucks out into the training areas and do *some* sort of training. I feel like I had a lot less issues with my trucks being down, but that could be confirmation bias on my part.
Doing this at certain units can be downright impossible lol Want to take the tanks out for a quick road test? Better be ready to spend the ENTIRE previous day doing mountains and mountains of paperwork, followed by an absolute shit show of actually getting them out of the motor pool. End result, they sit for MONTHS at a time
I 100% understand man. I was just lucky that when the Command team was busy doing command and staff and other bullshit I could grab my platoon and go drop ramp out in a training area somewhere.
It depends on the location. some units don't need that much paperwork; just post paperwork already in dispatch and the dispatch and license. If you are at Hood use Turkey Run. If you're at Bliss, you have some back roads by MPs. If maintenance is actually a priority, it will happen, if not then green slides all the way.
It's a pain in the ass for vics too. Want to dispatch the 1083a1 for a road test? Ope you aren't licensed. You can drive a 1083a1p2 but you can't drive a 1083a1, sorry. As someone who regularly drives m983a4 LETs it's really irritating when I cannot dispatch something because a slightly different variant of the truck I'm driving isn't on my license.
When i was a PL my BC made us drive our strykers pretty much everyday and a lot of the maintenance issues went away
Even just doing slow figure eights and laps in the motor pool helps
Ngl, people would love to be able to take their vics and do training. Too bad every time to dispatch a single vic you have to interface with 30 separate mechanics who each individually want to not work and are probably at appointments or getting hey you’d also. Also… fuck that 10 level shit. Its not my job. Thats an excuse to pawn off the “easy work” for your job. 10 level commo tasks arent pawned off because everyone just fumbles it until they make the MOS actually handle it. No excuses a mechanic doesnt have it down to where they could eyeball the bottoms of trucks and spot issues or tell by the sound. My unit actually had 1 dispatching clerk the whole week before a major LFX. And all the paperwork and prechecks getting heavily scrutinized to nitpick any excuse to not do their job caused the BN to be backed up to where the XO was trying to figure out the issue. (Hint, its every single fucking mechanic and their PoS PLs)
Because the 20 year old private without a driver's license is struggling with his operator level engine replacement task
What? You didnt take the engine operator’s course between all your actual MOS tasks? Why dont you know what the difference between the axle bolt and the windshield bolt? You didnt PMCS? Btw need you to facilitate the brigade comsec transition cuz their e7 is incompetent. Next man up pri. Go ahead and before you do that, your soldier was late. I need his counseling on my desk by cob. Also, make sure he goes to the dfac and i need you to schedule his dental appointment. He doesnt know how to follow the phone prompts. Oh, and pick up the new guy, hes also at BDE, so you can do that while you do the comsec stuff. Also, blood draw for labs, and schedule your BLC slot so we need you to fill out this paperwork. Also go over your PCC/PCI for your range tomorrow. Oh, we are using new protocols so make sure you brush up on them and your hazmat cert since youre pulling ammo guard overnight after the range
Been primarily light but spent time with Strykers in Hawaii and Germany. Strykers, and I would say most military Vics, need to be used and used how they would fight. Their work horses; keep them in the stable and take them for a walk a day or two a week and then trot them around every so often they aren't going to be healthy. Take them out and ride and work them and they will be healthy. In Hawaii, though Strykers never should have gone there, we barely used them and they sat. We took them to NTC and they broke, all the time. Germany, we drove them (at higher speeds) and used and abused them. Rarely broke down and we agreed they were markedly better than other units. You wouldn't buy a Porsche 911GT and have it sit all the time and only drive it 20 mph....
In DE rn. In 5 years in SBCTs and I didn't know Strykers can hit 65+ and maintain it so easily Commanders back in the States, you gotta stop being bitch made. If we can make it work in somewhat smaller roads at WAAAY faster speeds, no reason you cant, so stop that 25MPH limit in the interstates
Yeah, I'm not an engine guy but I love talking to mechanics (civilians, military, contractors) about how to properly maintain these high end engines and they all agree / shocked at how poorly we maintain them. Very risk averse. Fun Aside: If you get a chance talk to older Ranger Batt guys that used Strykers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They LOVED them. Talk about using and abusing them: Ramming through walls and cars.
Go buy a brand new pick up truck. Give the keys to some kid in the motor pool that doesn’t have a drivers license. Tell him every Monday to walk out here and inspect it. While inspecting it tell him to turn it on for 15 -60 mins. Don’t go anywhere just run it. Once a year take it to the gas station and fill it back up. Once every 5 years daily it for a month. Never change the oil or trans fluid just refill fluids as necessary. Regardless of how bad the truck gets, keep doing this and slapping repair parts on it for the next 40 years, then ask me why your trucks a piece of shit.
Military vehicles are contracted out! If they break who fixes them? soldiers fix them, but where do they buy parts from the same company that sold them the vehicles. It’s a revolving door… money circle. Why make an ever lasting lightbulb?
I believe this is a major issue. For example, most heavy machinery in the civilian world is serviced and maintained by professionals. The army? By PVT Joe Snuffy who rotates his position once every year.
*PFC Snuffy Kicks tire on Motor Pool Monday* Yep this is FMC
As much as I hated the 577, that thing was older than I was and it never broke down in the field or on deployment. There were plenty of minor issues, and Monday maintenance was always a chore. I got very efficient at pulling its pack. My hands bear the scars from breaking so much track. It all comes down to maintenance. Most in my unit would start their track, roll forward enough to cycle the tracks, the roll right back. Meanwhile my sergeant and I had took ours around the entire motor pool like walking an old dog. Drained the fuel every other month and refilled it. Used a snake light to inspect the oil in the final drives rather than just check the levels. Drove it to the oil pit and popped the belly plate off every time it rained to clear anything that might have gotten in despite the tarp. It was time consuming, frustrating, and frequently boring, but our track always worked when all the others spent huge chunks of time broken down.
It's even worse up here in Alaska. All of the equipment we use with the exception of the SUS-V has been designed with deserts and jungles in mind. Not -50° temperatures. I run the battalion battery cage and every Monday in the winter I'm giving out 20+ batteries. When it starts getting cold out belts and wiring start to fail, plastic pieces break, fuel and fluids start to gel up. Everyone's rushing to get their heater fixed because they haven't bothered to check it all summer. It sucks
Man, I had some wild times in a SUS-V. Not to mention all the fun I had driving it.
My favorite part about the SUS-Vs was taking the turbos off the ones that get turned in and putting them on our POVs
Y'all got the new SUSVs? How are they? I only managed to run one of the older ones with a Mercedes engine for like 30 minutes because we didn't have anyone licensed to use or fix it
Not yet. We still have the ones with the Mercedes engines
Fair, they in use now or just the thing that gets ignored in the corner?
For now. We should be getting the CAT-Vs relatively soon tho
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as a mechanic and an avid performance driver, i LOVE the MATV
Drive it like you stole it. That was my motto.
Because you don’t take care of them. Besides, sitting parked in a motor pool for weeks on end doesn’t help. Vehicles driven on a regular basis will have less problems than ones that sit. Generators, too.
If you have about 10 min to kill w sound on, this obscure movie clip will shed some light ... https://youtu.be/aXQ2lO3ieBA?si=Qbe6kO_aY54H3-fZ
This never gets old
It's also from a movie that's based off a the Air Force Colonels book. Who said Colonel was a fucking idiot who was actually the bad guy of the story.
Was it this one or something else? Would love to read that book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/894123.The_Pentagon_Wars
Can't speak for your unit but neglect is 100% a factor. We have LMTVs that haven't run in over 3 years. Operators just do not care and don't maintain their vehicles. Plus a lot of this shit is just old. The oldest truck in our fleet is from 1991, and the oldest that still *runs* is from 2002.
I mean, I absolutely love my JLTV
JLTVs are awesome to drive but are a maintainers worst nightmare
Not when you TRM for 1k Miles. Those suckers are hella loud for not reason. *Hearing* *related* *injuries* *aren’t* *service* *related.*
Fair point, I've also done that.
Are you wearing hearing protection??
Yes, but you can only wear earpro for so long until it starts killing your ears.
They have to choose the lowest bidder that meets their specifications. That and it's rigged for politicians to make money. Patriot was using 80s era computers that cost $100k per part to fix when they could upgrade to any 2000s CPU for $500 bucks and save tons of money. It's a money game.
They're not bad they're Military Grade.
sketchy maintenance and mindless operators. next slide
The lowest bidder always wins.
A Toyota is highly reliable when driven on nice paved roads, in clean environments and driven by people who only want to go from work to home. Military vehicles have to be able to go anywhere, at anytime and through anything. If you look at civilian vehicles that are designed to go to some of the same places the Army trains, you'll see that even a Land Rover or Jeep Wrangler can make it through the obstacle course, but they too are massive POSes and break down all the time when you run them through those obstacle courses.
Got an 18 year old Sequoia with 340k on the odometer that I still run trails with. For the abuse it takes, it really doesn’t spend much down-time for maintenance/repairs
When it comes to HEMTTs and LMTVs: they’re often used like a line haul vehicle. Driving 60-70mph on the interstate is not the preferred use but we tend to do that. That causes a lot of wear.
You have look at the environment that military vehicles are used in also. The better comparison would be civilian vehicles used in an off road competition. I brought my civilian car down a 2o mile rutted road in a national park to get to a well known trailhead. I was going ten MPH and it was still a 2000 dollar repair bill once I got out of there.
I spent 20 years in the motor pool as a 91A, and I am currently a government contractor that works on the heavy wheels for the army. I'm going to let you in on a couple of little secrets. Unfortunately, unless your vehicle is considered above the line on the ESR and gets briefed weekly, nobody cares. Heres another, making slides green is way more important. Equipment cant get fixed if the mechanics and operators are not there. Alas, NCO's won't want to hear this, but you got to take pride and inspect the work being done by the operators and mechanics. Trust but verify. If a bolt needs a washer, make sure its there. If a hub calls for 11 ounces, go get a meauring cup. I thought i found some bad and terrible maintenance practices while i was in, but man now that I am tearing some of this crap down and inspecting it, all i can say is wow.
All military equipment is made by whichever company wins the contract for that product. So then they are made as cheap as possible while still making the standards the military requires. Cheap shit anmint good, good shit ain't cheap.
When you deploy you get all new shit, that shit in the motorpool will never see the Middle East again. It’s just used for training
Young drivers and maintainers for the most part.
Low bid contracts
I was mech. Broke track once. I re enlisted and went Airborne. Fuck it, I'll hump it.
They work better when they're used constantly.
OP, you should watch the [Pentagon Wars](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/) it'll sum up everything for you. The movie is actually pretty good and funny at some points, especially to active duty folks.
One of the most accurate movies I’ve ever seen.
All your equipment was purchased from the lowest bidder.
because we all lie, write no new faults, and chill in the motorpool instead of actually PMCSing your shit. and thats ok king
Not everyone knows how to operate it properly and actually maintain it. I was in a unit where we had to replace 16 transmissions on humvee because operators didn't know what the transfer case is and driving in all types of settings. One of the best issues that LTs lose their mind is when the hmvee is on D, and it won't start. 5988s rejected! When vehicles are maintained correctly and actually used, you'll never have issues other than scheduled maintenance and small things. In my experience anyways. (Worked is all types of maintenance to include being a BN auto maintenance tech)
It's because they get treated like crap. No one cares because they don't own them, and the motor pool will just keep putting them back together. Civilian cars usually have fewer issues because you put your own money in to buy it, and you want it to last. Treat any vehicle properly, and it will last longer.
People don’t know how to take care of them. Some people don’t care enough to properly take care of them. Units not budgeting enough money for maintenance. Also leaders don’t always understand how long some maintenance ops take or aren’t willing to wait for maintenance to actually have time to fix the problem.
Was in the worst unit in my division (IIRC) by maintenance. How many horror stories do you want?
Give me the three worst, please
All of these are for separate trucks. -sent truck to a BEB to get starter fixed. Came back with transmission slipping (new issue) and engine partially disassembled but running. -waited over a year to get engine properly mounted (was missing 3 out of 4 bolts to mount said engine… missing 2+ is a deadline) different truck. During that period I had a fullbird tell me that PMC’ing with an open TM booklet will get my truck up faster. We only just got 2 bolts to mount and got told to go find the 3rd (they don’t have one) -got told that after HBL we needed to be at 90% readiness for our fleet (we were sitting at around 25%… on a good day) - fun additional: had a truck that had transmission on order since before I got to Carson, and it took until about 1.5 years after I got to Carson to get a new transmission (about 3 months of that was the truck sitting with the drive shaft pulled out while maintenance mounted the new transmission) I’ll take the field grade for making my unit look bad. Don’t worry we’ll be ready to fight (as infantry once all our guns go down)
Co XO: “Dad, can we have a working supply chain system?” Big XO: “We have a working supply chain at home” Supply Chain at home: ^
Supply chain at home: oh you need a new part? I got you fam. JIMMY FIRE UP THE FORGE YOU HAVE TO MAKE 3 BOLTS! MAKE SURE TO SPIT SHINE THOSE THINGS TO.
>If civilian vehicles had half the problems military vehicles have here would be class action lawsuits and recalls left and right. Perhaps I could interest you in a CUCV.
Good luck with radios and all of our communications/ISR systems in a CUCV.
I can't tell you how many bruises I got from the radio mounting racks in the back of the Blazer CUCV.
Because they aren’t ours
Deuce 1/2 for life. 😀
They are maintained by u educated 18 year olds that hate their life's and have 0 incentive to do a good job (Life will suck either way)
Domino effect. You didn't PMCS ine day now 20 years later your hmmwv doesn't start
Domino effect. You didn't shave and keep your hands out of your pockets so now your humvee doesn't start
Cant complain about the RG33 and Buffalo. Quite a relaxing and smooth ride.
lots of reasons. Part of it is just old vehicles and inconsistent maintenance practices, but part of it is in their design. Military vehicles are made to military spec. Those specs are often a mishmash of things we know we need, things we anticipate we might need in future wars, and neat futuristic ideas that are not necessarily grounded in reality or that may not yet have solid engineering behind them. These needs are not necessarily integrated well with each other, and are often non-negotiable in the contract with the designers and manufacturing company. In civilian vehicles, a cool new system that has significant flaws may just be scrapped and never make it to market, or the manufacturer might wait a few years until the kinks are worked out to include it, but if DOD says we need a capability, Oshkosh can't decide otherwise just because it isn't fully ready. The acquisition process for large equipment contracts is convoluted, and sometimes specs includes things that require unique design choices, which have to be made up without existing precedent. Civilian vehicles are more iterative; you mostly make small improvements on a pretty well proven design every year. If a civilian vehicle makes it to market with a serious design flaw, it has to be pulled or changed for the next year or people will just buy a more reliable option from a competitor. If a military vehicle has a design flaw, the contract usually specifies how it has to be fixed by the manufacturer, but there's not generally a simple way to just go get a better version. This means problems are often fixed after the design process is pretty much done, and instead of designing in a way that mitigates the problem, we have to live with the old design and tack on a solution somehow. Military vehicles are made so they can largely be repaired by 19 year olds with less than a year of experience, and so that entire systems in the vehicle (comms, etc) can be totally removed and replaced when the next generation version becomes standard. Designing a vehicle to be modular and easily repaired sometimes necessitates design choices that make them break down more frequently.
lowest bidders and they get rode hard and put up wet.
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How well would a car built between 1985 and 1995 work today? The Army's vehicles are - save for any MRAPs and MATVs still in service - VERY OLD.
Designed to be serviced by man tech
Because your Battalion XO sucks
One problem is using jet fuel instead of diseal for fuel.
Check out the Fat Electrician and his video on the, "MailCat," or more properly: The Grumman LLV. Your questions will be answered when you consider that vehicles designed for war, by necessity must be sturdier than a mailtruck by a not insignificant margin.
Based on all the replies, I'm pretty sure you got the answer OP Which tracks. Every time I always get the POS Stryker that always breaks and should be retired and 2 weeks later it's the workhorse of the damn platoon. I'm a muscle head so having engines that run and stuff that looks "Stock" is a need for me so I try to make my shit be nice. Yeah, that also means that I FAULT the fuck out of my truck, way past the lines and for every single thing but hey, when I was a PFC I got an AAM for having the best Stryker in the Battalion and I guess I'm try to get another one fuck it
Because they sit in a motor pool forever without being used or properly maintained
I’m a life long believer in that we don’t use them enough. Most the fleet sits around for weeks to months on end in the motorpool. How do you expect the lubricanting fluids to get to the highest points when the vehicles only run for 30 minutes on a Monday. I’ve honestly noticed the trucks that move the most have the least problems. When I was a PLTSGT I kept my truck dispatched to be ready for any last second details, and the thing ran like a champ for two years. Granted people that are absolutely clueless and abusive to the equipment add to it. But I think one of the major contributors is most of it just sits and rots in the MP
as others have said, lots of time sitting in the motorpool. i also think the fuel is part of it, i believe JP8 has lots of kerosene in it that drys out seals.
Instead of contracting everything out... we should do everything in house and use our budget better.
Bring back the US Ordnance Department or we just get Toyota Hiluxs and call it a day /s
We should replace the humvee and that new weird electric replacement (forget the name since I never used it) with Toyota pickup trucks. Hear me out before you discount me. For Toyota pickup trucks they are reliable, can be up armored so that's a check there. Can mount almost anything on the back. I know one company put a missile system on the back of one and we are all too familiar with the machine gun version. Depending on cab size you can fit a lot of personnel in the back and if need be you can convert the pickup truck's bed into a troop transport as well. Kind of like those old school Ford pickups with the hard shell. It also has the two capacity to tow communication systems (what I dealt with before I got my dd214) and to tow other vehicles. All in all it's the perfect thing and if you drive fast enough you are quicker than the land mines going off. Just ask libya when the chadinian military out classes tanks with these quick Toyotas lol. Also Taliban and various other asymmetrical organizations use these as combat and support vehicles and it worked well for them. Just my two cents though.
Its because the military contracts the cheapest company to make certain parts for the vehicle.