Photo: AM General
The military Humvee has been around for so long and comes in so many variants that it is more than easy to lose track of them all. AM General, the maker of the military Humvee, produces around eight versions of it, and the talk of the week is the 2-CT Hawkeye MHS.
The thing is a Humvee with a cabin for two and a platform at the back that can support a 105mm Mobile Howitzer System (MHS). AM General describes the vehicle as “the lightest weight, most highly maneuverable self-propelled howitzer in the world today.”
But such fancy words are never enough for the military, who is always on the lookout for better tech, in all and any respects. In the case of this particular Humvee, better would mean the integration of soft recoil technology (SRT).
AM General announced this week it received a contract from the U.S. Army to come up with two prototypes of the Hawkeye with the SRT on. The two are to be used for a characterization test to see how a soft recoil, mobile, Howitzer-wielding Humvee behaves.
Soft Recoil is meant to reduce the firing loads while at the same time reducing the weight of the hardware it is part of. AM General says the two Hawkeyes it will deliver to the Army should have a gross weight of 14,100 lbs (6.4 metric tons) each. These machines need to be on the light side of things, and they need to be capable of deployment utilizing C-130 airplanes. They will be powered by a 205-hp engine and fitted with ABS for better stopping power.
AM General is developing SRT together with Mandus Group and says it is already capable of being deployed on several platforms that are in need of such a system, as it is scalable.
But such fancy words are never enough for the military, who is always on the lookout for better tech, in all and any respects. In the case of this particular Humvee, better would mean the integration of soft recoil technology (SRT).
AM General announced this week it received a contract from the U.S. Army to come up with two prototypes of the Hawkeye with the SRT on. The two are to be used for a characterization test to see how a soft recoil, mobile, Howitzer-wielding Humvee behaves.
Soft Recoil is meant to reduce the firing loads while at the same time reducing the weight of the hardware it is part of. AM General says the two Hawkeyes it will deliver to the Army should have a gross weight of 14,100 lbs (6.4 metric tons) each. These machines need to be on the light side of things, and they need to be capable of deployment utilizing C-130 airplanes. They will be powered by a 205-hp engine and fitted with ABS for better stopping power.
AM General is developing SRT together with Mandus Group and says it is already capable of being deployed on several platforms that are in need of such a system, as it is scalable.
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