Cutting Edge

The Oshkosh M-ATV will be replacing up-armored Humvees in Afghanistan.

(Credit: Oshkosh Defense)

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are now starting to receive the first of thousands of a new vehicle intended for treacherous mountain roads and tight urban lanes.

The Defense Department said Wednesday that it had loaded seven M-ATVs (for "mine-resistant, ambush-protected all-terrain vehicles") onto a pair of aircraft for deployment to Afghanistan. Over the course of the next year, the military expects to field more than 6,600 of the vehicles (Click for a PDF of the M-ATV's brochure).

The M-ATV fits into a middle ground between up-armored Humvees, which it will be replacing in Afghanistan, and the hulking MRAP mine-resistant vehicles that the Pentagon has been sending in large numbers to Iraq over the last couple of years. While MRAPs have proved effective in protecting passengers against improvised explosive devices, they are often too large and too heavy for the roadways soldiers often need to patrol. And they're not exactly designed for off-roading.

Mine-resistant vehicles are characterized in part by their intrinsic armoring and by a V-shaped hull that helps to deflect the force of explosions at ground level. Humvees, meanwhile, weren't originally designed with IEDs in mind and have had to use add-on armor to gain some measure of protection.

The Oshkosh M-ATV weighs in at about 11 tons, which is only half as heavy as the average MRAP, and 5 tons lighter than the lightest MRAP. (Humvees are in the range of 5 tons apiece.) It can carry four passengers plus a gunner, and can handle a payload of 4,000 pounds.

A pair of M-ATVs are strapped down in a C-17 aircraft on Wednesday, awaiting shipment to Afghanistan.

(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/James M. Bowman)

The new vehicle is powered by a 370-horsepower Caterpillar C7 engine, with an Allison 3500 SP transmission. It's built on Oshkosh's TAK-4 independent suspension system, which the company says has been used already on more than 10,000 Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements (MTVRs) supplied to the Marines and Seabees.

In the field, the M-ATV is expected to support small-unit combat operations in challenging rural, mountainous, and urban environments.

Through the end of the year, when transport by sea is scheduled to begin, the U.S. Air Force expects to airlift between 300 and 500 M-ATVs per month from Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. The 437th Aerial Port Squadron there has already dispatched more than 3,700 MRAPs overseas.

Oshkosh received its initial delivery order from the Pentagon at the end of June. The deal was valued at $1.05 billion for 2,244 of the M-ATVs.

Update, 1:18 p.m. PDT: Oshkosh said Thursday that to date it has received orders valued at $2.3 billion for 4,296 M-ATVs, including spare parts and support services.

This is an artist's rendition of Ares I in the assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center. Ares I is a two-stage rocket configuration topped by the Orion crew vehicle and its launch abort system. It is designed to carry crews of four to six astronauts and has a 25-ton payload capacity.

(Credit: NASA)

President-elect Barack Obama appears to be gearing up for a space race 2.0, this time with China.

Obama's transition team is considering doing away with some of the barriers that separate the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, according to Bloomberg.

Citing people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team, Bloomberg says they believe collaboration between the country's civilian space agency and the military's space program would speed up the time in which the U.S. is able to send people back to the moon.

The main--and very costly--goal is to build a rocket that can carry Orion, NASA's next-generation spacecraft, to the International Space Station, the moon, and further out into the solar system. NASA has planned to use its new Ares I rocket for that purpose. Last year, it completed preliminary design review for the Ares rocket, which is slated to launch for the first time in 2015.

But Obama would like to get Orion in the air before then. Getting a working rocket system up and running will be critical to getting the U.S. back to self-sufficiency with its space programs. As it stands now, the current space shuttle is scheduled to retire in 2010. So if Orion launches with Ares as planned in 2015, this leaves a five-year period of time in which the U.S. will have to pay Russia to fly astronauts to and from the ISS. And that's assuming Orion (and Ares) are delivered on time. If history is any indicator, delays are likely if not guaranteed. And with added demands for federal funds due to the recession, it's unclear where NASA and some of its programs stand.

Bloomberg's sources suggest the Obama team believes the Defense Department (which spent about $22 billion in the last fiscal year) can share some of its resources to give NASA a boost--and that they're even considering scrapping development of the Ares rocket entirely in favor of using the Pentagon's Atlas or Delta rockets, which are much further along in development.

Whatever they decide, the incoming administration is likely feeling some pressure from China, which plans to land a robotic rover on the moon in 2012, with a manned mission to follow a few years later.