High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle

(Redirected from HMMWV)

Categories: Military trucks | Off-road vehicles

This article refers to the Military HMMWV, not the civilian Hummer sold by General Motors

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General characteristics (M998)

Manufacturer:

AM General

Length:

4.57 to 5.13 m

Width:

2.16 m

Height:

1.75 to 2.59 m

Ground clearance:

0.4 m (axle), 0.6 m (chassis)

Mass:

3.5 to 4.5 tonnes

Speed:

88.5 km/h

Range:

440 to 540 km

Crew:

2 to 4 people

The M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV or Hum-Vee) is a highly durable military motor vehicle. It has largely supplanted the role formerly served by the jeep and other light trucks with the United States military, and is also used by a number of other countries and organizations.

1 Features
2 History
3 Use in Iraq and political implications
4 Versions
5 See also
6 External links

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Features

There are at least 18 variants of the HMMWV in service with the United States armed forces. HMMWV serve as cargo/troop carriers, automatic weapons platforms, ambulances (four litter patients or eight ambulatory patients), M220 TOW missile carriers, M119 howitzer prime movers, M-1097 Avenger surface-to-air missile platforms, MRQ-12 direct air support vehicles, S250 shelter carriers among many others. It is capable of fording 30 inches (0.76 m) normally, or 5 ft (1.5 m) with deep-water fording kit.

Optional equipment includes a winch (maximum load capacity 6,000 lb (2,700 kg)), and supplemental armor. The M1025 and M1043/M1044 armament carriers provide mounting and firing capabilities for the MK19 grenade launcher, the M2 machine gun, the M240G machine gun and M249 SAW.

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History

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A HMMWV firing a TOW missile

In the 1970s, the United States Army concluded that the militarized civilian trucks in use no longer satisfied their requirements. In 1979, the Army drafted specifications for a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV. In July of that year, AM General began preliminary design work, and less than a year later, the first prototype, the M998, was in testing.

In June 1981, the Army awarded AM General a contract for development of several more prototype vehicles to be delivered to the U.S. government for another series of tests, and the company was later awarded the initial production contract for 55,000 HMMWVs to be delivered in 1985. HMMWVs first saw combat in the Persian Gulf Conflict of 1990-91.

They have become the backbone of U.S. forces around the world. Over 10,000 were used by U.S. forces as well as some other countries during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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Use in Iraq and political implications

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A destroyed Humvee following an RPG attack

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Humvee with bolt-on armor kit

With the rise of asymmetric warfare and low-intensity conflicts, the HMMWV has found itself thrust into roles it was not originally intended for. The HMMWV was not designed to offer protection against light infantry weapons and has proven very vulnerable to them. Although the large variety of HMMWV types is a testament to the vehicle’s adaptability to changing mission conditions, it was also never designed to be an armored personnel carrier (APC).

As it is not an armored vehicle in its base form, an HMMWV is very vulnerable to rocket propelled grenades (or RPGs, which are common among the Iraqi resistance) and offer the troops within little protection from small arms fire. There are several armor kits available for the vehicle, which afford it greater protection from small-arms fire. These armor kits are desigined to protect a Humvee's occupants from small-arms fire up to an RPG, though these were not provided in adequate numbers to American forces in Iraq prior to the invasion. As a result of this, American soldiers often have to improvise extra armor layers with scrap materials (also known as "hillbilly armor") to improve the safety of the HMMWV. While “hardening” or “up-armoring” their vehicles with sandbags, metal, and plywood arguably does make the vehicles safer, it also slows them down. Some believe that hardening simply creates more shrapnel when attacked with an RPG or improvised explosive device. This extra hardening further hampered the ability of the M998 and M1025 due to the addition of excess weight which overloaded the suspension and drivetrain components of these HMMWVs.

In 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under criticism from U.S. soldiers and their families for not providing better equipped HMMWV [1]. Rumsfeld pointed out that, prior to the war, armor kits were produced only in small numbers per year. As the role of American forces in Iraq changed from fighting the Iraqi Army to suppressing the guerilla insurgency, armor kits were manufactured as quickly as additional production facilities could be brought online.

In response to the public outcry over the perceived vulnerability of HMMWVs, the U.S. Department of Defense contracted AM General to make the M1114 Uparmored HMMWV. The M1114 has been in limited production since 1996 and had seen limited use in the Balkans before deployment to the Middle East. This design has a larger, more powerful engine with a turbocharger, air conditioning and a strengthened suspension and boasts a fully armored passenger area protected by hardened steel and bullet-proof glass. With the increase in direct attacks and guerilla warfare in Iraq, AM General has diverted the majority of its manufacturing power to producing these vehicles.

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