"The Pentagon is accelerating its search to replace the Humvee after two years of roadside bomb blasts and suicide attacks in Iraq," says USA Today.
"Before the war in Iraq, a successor to the Army's dominant vehicle wasn't due until the middle of the next decade. Now the Army plans to review designs this fall, and working prototypes will be due in June."
The U.S. military needs those prototypes to be better armored than the often thin-skinned Humvees, of course. But they also want "a beefier suspension that can handle the weight of the armor... lower fuel consumption, to reduce the need for supply convoys that have been targets of insurgents... [and] improved onboard power generation to handle the expanding array of electronics that troops take into battle today compared with the simple radios of 30 years ago."
I've got a brief profile of one potential Humvee replacement in next month's Popular Mechanics. Defense Review looks at another, Georgia Tech's Ultra Armored Patrol.
(Big ups: Eric)
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