ARNG humvee modernization gets $100M in spending bill

Despite the Army requesting no funding to modernize humvees for the National Guard in fiscal year 2019, House and Senate appropriators have decided to give the program $100 million.

The upgrade integrates the humvee cab onto a new chassis, provided by AM General.

The service plans to replace about half of its total humvee fleet in the active component -- except for the ambulance variant -- with about 49,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles made by Oshkosh Defense, which suffered only a minor cut in the spending bill.

Conferees included a $40 million decrease in JLTV procurement, citing unit cost and engineering change proposal cost growth and test support excess.

The Senate Armed Services Committee proposed a bigger cut, $250 million, in its mark of the FY-19 policy bill, but the final National Defense Authorization Act included only a $32 million decrease.

The spending bill also denied the Army $2.7 million in research, development, test and evaluation funding under JLTV engineering and manufacturing due to a lack of need.

The Army this month awarded AM General a potential $800 million hybrid contract to procure 2,800 ambulance variants of active-Army humvees, with the first delivery scheduled for the second quarter of FY-19.