by Wallace Wyss –
I remember when the original Humvee came out, we were just getting a war on and it was fashionable to buy a military HumVee, until you found out how slow it was, how wide it was and how uncivilized.
Then General Motors came out with a civilian vehicle, the Hummer, which was more usable by civilians and still had the brute force styling of the military one. GM is planning on bringing back a Hummer style vehicle, though ironically as an electric, for civilians but now they announced, an arm of General Motors has been given a $214.3 million contract to build the U.S. Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV).
The U.S. Army Contracting Command–Detroit Arsenal announced the contract was going to GM Defense LLC, a subsidiary of General Motors, for what they describe as an all-terrain troop carrier. It is equipped to carry a nine-soldier infantry squad throughout the battlefield, light enough to be loaded from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, and compact enough to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.
Underneath the olive drab (or is that Sahara sand?) is a 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck and 90 percent commercial off-the-shelf parts such as Multimatic dual spool-valve dampers and Chevrolet Performance suspension components.
The vehicle is based off of the 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck and leverages 90 percent commercial off-the-shelf parts. GM calls it the “GMD IS”. I don’t know if meeting passenger car emissions is part of the plan but there’s a part of me that wants to predict that there will spring up conversion shops to change regular Colorados into a look-alike for these so you can go around acting like you’re ready for Armageddon.
The contract is for 649 vehicles. The Army acquisition objective is 2,065 vehicles in all. I don’t see any provision for armored doors. I know the original Hum-Vees armored up after they proved so vulnerable, I don’t think any civilians will want armor but, hey, there’s Chicago’s 100-shootings-per weekend that makes you think there’s a civilian market. Ironically the original Hum-Vees went to the Middle East without heavy armor but kept being updated, giving in to demands it be armored, carry a heavy machine gun in a turret, be able to resist IED’s, and on and on, and on so the cost per unit climbed way past its original price. Once this new truck hits the war zone, the same complaints and demands will arise all over again.
The ISV concept emerged in 2015 when Army officials at the Maneuver Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia asked for their light infantry units ultra-light combat vehicle for forced-entry operations. GM Defense and Ricardo competed against teams from Flyer Defense LLC and Oskosh Defense LLC, as well as SAIC and Polaris Inc., in the initial rapid prototyping phase of the effort in 2019.
I think GM will also take note of Ford offering interiors in a 2021 F150 that lend themselves into turning seating areas into work areas so GM will probably think about that too and that means your truck can be your rolling HQ when you’re in the woods.
Of course it could be the American public is steamed at the never ending war in the Middle East and would not want to see anything that reminds them of it. But it could go the other way–civilian cars go more macho. All that’s missing is the gun racks….
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss is compiling an anthology of 25 car-based fiction stories. Interested publishers can reach him at mendoart7@gmail.com
Photos: GM Defense
Sending a stripped down civilian vehicle into a war zone/combat situation is a huge mistake, and put our military personnel in harms wsy. Military vehicles should be desugned as military vehicles ftom the outset for battlefield conditions, and to do so otherwise to save money like this us a disgrace.