The quieter, cooler, less maintenance-intensive vehicles will make up at least part of the Army’s future fleet.
From the outside, the open-air troop transport on display inside the Washington Convention Center looks like the ones being purchased by the U.S. Army. But under the hood, it’s a different story.
The souped-up dune buggy, a militarized version of the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 pickup truck, is fully powered by batteries. Gone is the diesel fuel engine, replaced with an electric motor. It’s the type of technology that one would expect to see at the Washington Auto Show—held inside this very same building—not at the largest land-warfare show in the United States.
Yet as demand for electric and hybrid passenger vehicles increases across the United States, the U.S. Army too is getting closer to adopting the same propulsion technology in armored personnel carriers. Military vehicle manufacturers are making sizable investments in the technology, some of which were on display this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington.
For the Army, hybrid and electric vehicles are not just about saving the planet, but also saving soldiers’ lives. They run quieter and emit less heat than ones running on a combustion engine, helping to conceal them from sensors on satellites, aircraft, and missiles.
“It’s got a really low IR signature,” Stephen duMont, the president of GM Defense, said of the all-electric Infantry Squad Vehicles at this week’s conference. “There’s no hot engine. There’s no hot exhaust pipe. There’s no hot hood. Those are the things that tend to give you contrast when you’re targeting.” READ MORE