AM General has now entered low-rate production of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) A2 variant following a surprising contest in which the company supplanted Oshkosh, the original contractor, nearly two years ago.
Ahead of the International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX 2025) in Abu Dhabi, the new manufacturer revealed that the US Army will receive initial deliveries in the second quarter of 2025.
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In an exclusive interview with Army Technology at IDEX, John Chadbourne, AM General chief business development officer and government relations designate, fleshed out the company’s gradual approach to its new iteration of JLTVs.
“Right now it is very slow, which is a very typical thing. You get it right now versus having to try to force [the vehicles] through fast and then go back and have to [change things],” he said, emphasising quality over time.
“There’s not a tremendous amount of pressure on us,” he added: the full operational capability estimate for 20,000 vehicles and 10,000 trailers was pushed from 2039 to 2057 according to a Congressional Research Service overview of the programme.
After the follow-on contract award in 2023, AM General began to build a new, 96-acre smart factory in Indiana specifically for JLTV production, which is now up and running and where vehicle construction has already begun.
The company aim to meet “what would be close to full rate production” – around 15 vehicles a day.
JLTV A2 engineering changes
There are 250 engineering changes in the A2 variant, “and when I throw that number out there,” Chadbourne remarked, “people are like, ‘oh my god, it’s a completely different vehicle.’”
AM General aim to optimise the layout of the A2 in a modular way. The complicated engineering of components in the A1 iteration, Chadbourne suggested, would cause maintenance prolbems.
“What that caused is if a soldier needed to fix one thing, they had to remove six things to get to that one thing out.”
He pointed to the need to re-design the A2 with maintenance in mind:
“Young soldiers have minimum maintenance training, and so they were having to basically bring in field service representatives to provide maintenance for fairly simple things that should be able to be maintained.”
Looking back and forward
Notably, as part of the follow-on contract, the supplier will also take on the responsibility of keeping the entire JLTV family of vehicles in shape for the Army – including the units built by Oshkosh. The former contractor has until November 2025 to finish all of its JLTV production.
Chadbourne confirmed that AM General will soon adapt legacy A1 units with A2 capabilities going forward.
“The US government hasn’t given us that list yet, but that’ll be because they’re going to wait and see what those changes are. But also, is the amount that we would have to pay to go retrofit all the A1s with this change worth the cost of doing that?”
Looking forward, it is also worth noting that this is the first time the JLTV A2 was displayed at a global defence trade show. “There is a lot of international interest,” he added.
“[Oshkosh] didn’t really sell a lot of A1s internationally. Around 1,000, it’s not major. We [AM General] have hundreds of thousands of Humvees all over the world.”
Most recently, Oshkosh continues to supply the third batch of JLTV A1s to Lithuania towards a total of 500 vehicles, besides other Nato partners: Montenegro, Slovenia, Slovakia, Belgium, Lithuania, North Macedonia, and Romania.
