Last week, AM General demonstrated three vehicles for the UK Ministry of Defence at Millbrook proving ground in Bedfordshire, marking the American company’s interest in pursuing the country’s Land Mobility Programme (LMP).
An unarmoured Humvee, the Humvee Sabre, and JLTV A2 – each with different levels of armoured capability – were demonstrated against “aggressive obstacles.”
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In an interview with Army Technology a few days later at the AUSA exhibition in Washington DC, John Chadbourne, executive vice president at AM General, relayed several updates in their future effort to replace the British Army’s diverse and legacy vehicle fleet with approximately 8,000 vehicles, including ongoing evaluation of manufacturing sites in the UK.
Early information presented by the British Army in 2023 specified a requirement for four main platform types: heavy (~500 vehicles), medium (~2000 vehicles), light (~2500 vehicles), and utility (~3000 vehicles).
Government officials have stated that priority will be given to companies that focus on mission system modularity, as the Army aim to consolidate 16 designs currently utilised in the mobility fleet down to around five, emphasising commonality.
“Excess ground vehicles”
AM General is looking to diversify its portfolio on the world stage at a time of domestic political uncertainty and a new threat landscape in land warfare.
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By GlobalDataAt the end of April 2025, the US Department of Defense (now styled the Department of War) dismissed JLTVs and Humvees as “excess ground vehicles”. While the former have been in service since 2016, the latter have been used going back to the late 1980s.
Still, the company already supply these vehicles to more than 70 countries, including the leading combatants – Israel and Ukraine – but the UK would be a new potential user for the company.
On the show floor at AUSA, one common theme has been industrial cooperation in the field of counter drone (C-UAS) solutions. Typically, this has comprised a common baseline platform and numerous kinetic and non kinetic effects from various suppliers. Honeywell, for example, displayed its concept of a multi-layered system able to detect, track, and counter drone swarms which it delivered to the US Army in September.
In this industrial backdrop, it is hard to see the rationale behind the argument put forward by the self-styled Secretary of War that “yesterday’s weapons will not win tomorrow’s wars.” However, Chadbourne maintained that AM General are delivering a backlog of nearly 4,000 JLTV A2s and trailers for the Army which will, nevertheless, provide business for the next several years.
Many vehicles are needed at the tactical level to provide a very short range air defence solution against adversarial drones. This capability is no longer limited to the remit of a few air defence units. This disaggregated and tactical air defence model will no doubtless play a part of the Golden Dome vision, which has still yet to be defined.
Plan to localise manufacturing
“We’re in the initial stages of where would be best” to set up a manufactuing site in the UK, Chadbourne said. But “of course, the level will be dictated upon when we do receive requirements for the solicitation.”
As part of their efforts to localise manufacturing in the country, the company has formed a strategic collaboration with the UK defence contractor, Marshall Land Systems, with its experience of vehicle assembly, systems integration, and in-service support for the UK Armed Forces.
“Any part of that programme is going to have to have some UK content in the vehicle as far as production facilities and some additional advanced engineering to help integrate the different types of systems that would be required for the UK,” Chadbourne noted.
The Ministry of Defence published its Defence Industrial Strategy several weeks ago. Its plan to ‘make defence an engine for growth’ stipulates that whenever the government invest in overseas suppliers, it will ensure that the British economy is strengthened in return through new jobs and novel technologies.
