A Biden-era plan to test electric Infantry Squad Vehicles is in jeopardy as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George contends the capability is not suitable for battle, while new political opposition has emerged in the White House and Pentagon to initiatives adjacent to clean energy or climate change.
“We are working to try to change this expenditure to deliver hybrid ISVs instead -- which have already proven capable and effective in training,” Col. Dave Butler, communications advisor to George, told Inside Defense.
The $13.3 million contract, awarded to GM Defense in January 2024, laid out a plan to ship eISV prototypes to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA, for evaluation next year -- even though the Army canned its only electric vehicle program last fall.
“The chief is interested in spending money only on war-winning technologies,” Butler said. “Purely electric vehicles have no place on today’s battlefield.”
That dovetails with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mantra under President Trump, which champions a focus on “lethality” with an eye toward slashing climate mitigation programs.
But the eISV testing is going forward nonetheless, with GM Defense putting prototypes together right now, John Hufstedler, Army product director of Ground Mobility Vehicles, told Inside Defense last month.
Whether they’ll be delivered, or if the Army can back out, isn’t as clear.
“This was DOD-directed,” Butler said. “Gen. George did not support this at the time and still does not.”
Timelines and funds
As of now four all-electric prototypes are still slated to arrive in November.
From there, the eISVs are supposed to run through safety tests at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, and Yuma Proving Ground, AZ, before heading to NTC in the fall of 2026 -- “maybe the summertime,” Hufstedler said.
The directive stems from the previous administration’s 2022 Defense Department Sustainability Plan, drafted after former President Biden put out an executive order tasking government agencies and departments to invest in clean energy.
Funds for the eISV testing were sourced from an energy conservation initiative out of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.
Those policies, however, are at odds with Trump’s Defense Department, which “does not do climate change crap,” Hegseth tweeted Monday.
The Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs declined to provide comment for this story, and GM Defense referred questions to the Army.
“As always, GM Defense is committed to helping the U.S. military explore the best use of advanced technologies to solve the challenges of current and future conflict,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email.
‘The art of possible’
Industry doesn’t have the infrastructure for all-electric right now, Hufstedler, who oversees the ISV program, told Inside Defense at a Tactical Wheeled Vehicle conference Feb. 25.
It’s a sentiment echoed by senior Army leaders in recent months, considering the inordinate needs of electric vehicles in remote areas with potentially harsh climates.
“There are obviously no charging stations” on the battlefield, George told reporters at a Feb. 12 roundtable. “So, we’re not interested,” he said. “We’re not interested at all.”
Then why the continued testing?
It’s about “seeing what’s in the art of possible, I would guess,” Mark McCoy, Army project manager for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, said at the same conference, hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association.
“I don’t think anybody is at this point looking at a pure electric kind of solution,” he went on. “We’ve been asked to do more around hybrid.”
But from anti-idle to full-blown, fully electric, there’s a wide capability spectrum to survey with the TWV fleet, McCoy continued -- and if industry increasingly shifts toward electric vehicles, the service may have to ask if that’s a viable route down the line.
“And in particular, as we’re working with GM, if they phase out [internal combustion] engines, we’ve got to look at what are the other things that we could go to,” he said.
Otherwise, “we’re going to be kind of chasing.”
Requirement potential
George wants to trade eISVs for a diesel hybrid-electric model he’s coined the “ISV Heavy,” which impressed him when soldiers tooled around with it at last month’s “Transforming in Contact” exercise in Germany.
“The very unique thing about that is it can actually power the brigade command and control node for two days on a single charge -- so, completely quiet,” George told reporters at the February roundtable.
Units can recharge its battery up to three times, he went on, “so I’m thinking about fuel, I’m thinking about how much that will reduce our signature.”
The 3rd Light Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division tested the prototype -- GM Defense is calling it the Next Generation Tactical Vehicle -- at a joint military exercise at Hohenfels Training Area in Bavaria.
That model is based off GM’s Chevrolet Silverado ZR2 truck; the Army’s current ISV shares most of its parts with the smaller Colorado ZR2.
While the heavier, hybrid version isn’t a program of record, soldiers seemed particularly excited about the export power “that’s not inherent in an ISV today,” according to McCoy.
“I think that would be one of the things that may get carried forward into a future requirements update or something like that for us to account for,” he said.
Hufstedler noted that it wouldn’t be hard to take those “ISV Heavy” capabilities and simply integrate them into something smaller.
“You just might not have the same payload-carrying capacity that you would in a larger size.”
Weighing options
The Army has also run GM Defense’s Infantry Utility Vehicle, a four-or-five-seat ISV variant that swaps out some passengers for cargo-carrying capacity, through a few combat training center renditions, Hufstedler said.
It’s fixed with a pickup bed in the back for soldiers to quickly haul things like mortars, anti-tank and counter-drone systems across the battlefield. As of now the current ISV can host up to nine soldiers and has no cargo bed.
“It’s something the Army’s looking at, but whether a decision will be made in the near term is unknown,” Hufstedler said.
What is known is that the current ISV is fueled by a Duramax turbo diesel engine, which GM Defense is upgrading, Hufstedler said. The company is also trading out its six-speed transmission for an eight-speed.
All other choices hinge on affordability.
“At some point, some of these technologies can drive costs,” McCoy said. “We’ve got to look at that and make decisions: Do we need all vehicles to have that capability? Or a portion of them?”
As the Army goes forward with TiC 2.0, the service will home in on the heavy brigades rather than the Infantry Brigade Combat Team-focus that TiC 1.0 had, McCoy said. This next iteration likely means less TiC testing of the ISV and more with “JLTVs and Humvees and things like that, that are already within these heavy formations,” he said.
Right now, McCoy’s program office is working with the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office on retrofitting hybrid-electric powertrain technology on its JLTV and Humvee fleet, a process the service kicked off more than four years ago.
“We’re trying to reduce the amount of fuel that’s out there on the battlefield, and hybrids help get us to that,” McCoy said. “It’s a matter of, is that going to be mature enough to operate in the environment that our military systems are asked to? Is it affordable as well?”
“There’s still lots of decisions that need to be made, and that will help inform the requirements,” he said.