Here Comes the Smooth Ride to Replace the Military’s Hated Humvee by Dave Philipps – New York Times
The war zone of tomorrow may be a dystopian hellscape of crippling cyber strikes, autonomous death rays and swarms of killer bots. But whatever America’s future conflicts might bring, this much is certain: There will finally be cup holders.
The United States military is replacing the aging and little-loved Humvee, the all-purpose military truck that bumped and slogged and sweltered through decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the fact that it offered nowhere to put a drink was just one of the many shortcomings, large and small, that came to irritate, and even endanger, the troops who spent long deployments in its cramped confines.
Now the Pentagon is rolling out the Humvee’s successor, a 340-horsepower beast called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV. And as a recent test ride at an Army training base made clear, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the Humvee…