Marine Corps to Increase JLTV Buy to 15,000 to Replace its Humvee Fleet

The Marine Corps is nearly doubling the number of Joint Light Tactical Vehiclesit plans to buy to replace its fleet of aging Humvees, officials said this week.

The planned increase -- up to about 15,000 from the 9,000 the service initially planned to buy -- comes as the Marine Corps recently declared the JLTV has reached initial operating capability and is ready to deploy with Marines into combat.

The JLTV is the result of a joint effort by the Army and the Marine Corps to field a more capable tactical vehicle after seeing how the Cold War-era Humvee could not protect troops from the powerful, homemade bombs enemy forces used on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Corps had originally planned on buying just 5,500 JLTVs but later increased that number to 9,000. Even with that increase, the Marines maintained earlier this year that the JLTV would replace only about 60 percent of the service's Humvees over the next decade.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/15/marine-corps-increase-jltv-buy-15000-replace-its-humvee-fleet.html