Major ground vehicle companies including General Dynamics Land Systems, BAE Systems, Oshkosh Defense and GM Defense are investing millions into rapidly maturing hybrid and electric technologies at a time when the Army has begun to take climate change seriously, evidenced in recent months by the release of its Climate Strategy and Climate Strategy Implementation Plan.
Hybrid, and, eventually, all-electric tactical vehicles will be critical to meeting the Army’s goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and the climate plan calls on the service to field fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.
But -- critically -- the investments in hybrids by major defense companies aren’t simply about reducing planet-warming emissions to stave off climate change. The development efforts are a vote of confidence in the added capability hybrid vehicles could deliver on the battlefield. The Army sees the tactical benefits, and industry sees room to profit.
At the annual convention of the Association of the United States Army this week, Army leaders expressed a burgeoning confidence in those tactical benefits and the major leaps made by industry within the last year in developing hybrid platforms.
“Commercial industry is leading on this, and we are going to benefit from their investments,” Army acquisition executive Doug Bush said during a panel. “In particular, I think where we'll make the most progress by 2030 is really on the wheeled vehicle side.”
While near-term cuts in carbon emissions appear likely to come from emission reduction on Army installations using existing technology, the Army’s long-term goals will require industry to develop technology that does not yet exist -- like an all-electric tank.
Army officials at AUSA said they were content to let industry continue to lead the way on hybridization and electrification. Officials said they would not put electric requirements, or even hybrid requirements, into procurement requirements any time soon.
Multiple service officials said the Army benefits from providing flexible requirements to industry that leave space for some creative problem solving rather than providing a rigid framework: “There's a lot of innovation out there, and the government doesn't have the only good ideas here,” Bush said. “So, I think that approach is probably better.”
That approach has yielded hybrid proposals on at least one of the Army’s modernization priorities. All the bids for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle are hybrid proposals, Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, program executive officer for ground combat systems, told reporters at the conference.
“We've seen all the five current participants go to hybrid electric designs, which, that's a major shift for us,” Dean said. “And each one of them has taken a different approach to how they achieve the hybrid electric.”
Dean and other officials said industry chose hybrid bids because Army requirements for fuel efficiency, noise reduction and other factors lent themselves to a hybrid solution. But he too said the Army wouldn’t impose hybrid-only requirements on upcoming programs. If industry can find a way to meet Army standards with a more efficient diesel engine, rather than a hybrid, the Army will eagerly consider those bids too, Dean said.
But the Army has a long list of characteristics it wants in future vehicles that will very likely favor hybrid and all electric technology. The service sees major survivability benefits in silent watch and silent drive capabilities, which hybrid vehicles achieve by using only their electric motor to power the vehicle to avoid the noise of a diesel engine. Other benefits like fuel efficiency improvements and the reduced logistics burden that come with them are a boon for hybrids, although Army officials said they believed those benefits could also be achieved with newer combustion engines.
The Army is investing in hybrid technology even as it leaves room for other solutions. The service awarded BAE Systems a rapid prototyping contract to deliver a hybrid version of the BAE-made Bradley Fighting Vehicle troop transporter, the first two of which were turned on earlier this year. The effort is intended to inform future requirements, helping the Army discover what’s possible and what it can ask from industry on future projects.
“What are reasonable expectations for silent watch, silent mobility, logistics, demand, production, so we don't ask for something that's totally unobtainable, that then causes us to be into a tech development spin for 10 years,” said Brig. Gen. Geoff Norman, director of the next-generation combat vehicles cross functional team. “And so, these prototyping efforts have been really valuable to inform requirements moving forward.”
Officials said they chose to tackle the Bradley project because they believe it will prove to be the most difficult ground vehicle to turn into a hybrid, and thus would yield the most important lessons.
'Tech demonstrators'
In the absence of Army investment in other legacy programs, industry is investing research and development money into bringing hybrid technology to exiting platforms.
In the basement of the Washington Convention Center, a gray-and-black-painted hybrid Abrams tank sat next to a hybrid Stryker combat vehicle at the General Dynamics Land Systems booth.
General Dynamics officials said the platforms were “tech demonstrators,” and in bringing them to AUSA, they hoped to get feedback from the Army that would help guide future research and development efforts.
“These vehicles are full-up, full scale -- not mockups or not plastic or PowerPoint or anything -- these are full-up vehicles that have on them technology that is currently available or very near-term to being available on actual vehicles,” Tim Reese, director, AUSA, U.S. business development, told Inside Defense before the convention.
But Reese also cautioned the company wasn’t yet ready to refer to the vehicles, dubbed AbramsX and StrykerX, as prototypes, because there isn’t an active Army competition for them to compete in.
General Dynamics, which produces the gas-powered Abrams and Stryker for the Army, said the hybrid variants are each powered by different hybrid configurations that vary in how the electric and gas-powered components of the system are connected to the axles.
Company officials said the existing Abrams fleet could be retrofitted with hybrid technology and said they are looking to do the same on the Stryker because the suspension and hull on StrykerX are unchanged from the traditional model.
General Dynamics says AbramsX and StrykerX bring all the benefits of hybrid technology, including silent drive, without adding weight to Abrams and with limited additional weight to the Stryker. In the case of AbramsX, the hybrid variant might be lighter than its predecessor, Keith Barclay, director of U.S. strategy and growth said: “You've reduced fuel, you've reduced hydraulic fluid by a significant quantity. We think that it's actually a weight reduction, even when you include the batteries into the vehicle.”
Company officials said StrykerX has a smaller engine than the Caterpillar-made diesel engine in the traditional Stryker because the electric battery pack enables the hybrid platform to deliver the same amount of power to the axles with a smaller engine.
The StrykerX engine is made by GM Defense, which itself sought to make an electric splash at AUSA, bringing an Army-green Hummer EV and another electric concept vehicle to its two-story booth at the show.
The Army bought a Hummer EV last year as part of a program to test the ability of all-electric vehicles to complete military missions and refine requirements for the planned electric Light Reconnaissance Vehicle.
GM Defense, founded in 2017, says it intends to leverage a $35 billion investment in commercial electric vehicles made by its parent company, General Motors, to deliver solutions in the defense sector: “What we really were formed for, was to become a defense company that could then help in that partnership to deliver electric, autonomous and connected vehicle technologies” GM Defense president Stephen duMont told Inside Defense in the days before AUSA.
duMont is bullish that the Army will reach the all-electric future promised by the Climate Strategy, largely because of the tactical benefits promised by electric vehicles. He highlighted the lower thermal signature of all-electric vehicles as compared to diesel engines -- a lesson from his years as an Apache pilot.
“I was an Apache guy, so I used to target vehicles through their heat signature. When you don't have a hot engine, hot exhaust, a hot hood from the engine underneath, it's really difficult to target vehicles.”
He added that electric engines are more reliable because they have fewer moving parts, and they can also serve as a “net contributor of energy in the battlespace,” meaning their batteries can be used to power other equipment, eliminating the need for a noisy, diesel generator.
“What we eventually will get to, in my view, is building out the infrastructure needed to support all-electric vehicles at the tactical edge. But right now, I think the step that the Army is taking in that direction will be first with hybrid vehicles, and that's understandable.”
GM is working to build out that infrastructure with investments in battery and charging technology, and the company says it currently can charge about 100 miles of range into the Hummer EV in about 12 minutes.
eJLTV hybrid
Across the AUSA exhibit hall from the GM Defense booth, Oshkosh Defense displayed a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle that it says can be retrofitted as a hybrid. Oshkosh earlier this year unveiled the eJLTV, the hybrid-electric version of the vehicle it has produced for the Army since it won the original competition in 2015.
Oshkosh will showcase the eJLTV at Project Convergence, an opportunity to show the Army what hybrids are capable of. Although the Army hasn’t issued a request for information for the eJLTV, Oshkosh vice president George Mansfield said he had heard a lot of interest from Army officials in the hybrid capability: “That's the way they want to go, and so we invested, and this is our solution.”
The hybrid version is about 20% more fuel efficient than its predecessors but uses the same engine and transmission of the normal JLTV, which is why the company says the existing fleet can be retrofitted.
The Army’s climate strategy implementation plan calls on the service to field a "Tactical Vehicle Electrification Kit” to 12% of the JLTV fleet by fiscal year 2027, and Army leaders said they consulted with industry in developing that target and others to ensure it was feasible, although they did not specifically name Oshkosh.
Oshkosh is participating in a competition for a 10-year follow-on production contract for the JLTV. The Army has released what is expected to be the final draft version of the follow-on requirements, and they do not include any hybrid technology.
A hybrid powertrain requirement probably would not be added to the JLTV follow-on requirements this late in the process, but Oshkosh would be interested in providing the technology if the government is interested, company president John Bryant previously said.
The eJLTV will cost more than the JLTV, Mansfield, the vice president, said, but he hopes the Army will see the eJLTV as an upgraded vehicle that's worth any additional cost. That combined with the lower sustainment costs and fuel savings has him confident the Army will buy them some day.
“They’re going to save a lot of money on fuel,” he said.