I just can't imagine driving something that big to carry four people. My M577 Command Post in Germany was 26,000 pounds and change!

It's a mini-MRAP.  Did the M577 meet those standards?

 

Congress keeps forcing our military to become overweight and road bound.

JLTV is what happens when the press and Congress spec military vehicles through public opinion.

 

My 577 wasn't an MRAP, but then again it was a combat engineer unit. Combat engineers seek, destroy and emplace battlefield obstacles, which is a mission I can't imagine being able to do from the inside of a vehicle. For more protection (which is arguable as far as how effective it is, all the enemy has to do is make the boom bigger, in the race between weapons and armor, weapons have been winning as of late), you sacrifice mobility, double the number of vehicles it  takes to move a squad, double (at a minimum) your logistics footprint, which restricts your movement.

 

Congress needs to get back to asking the military what it needs instead of dictating.

 

In 1986-7 the military asked for Heavy Hummers and better body armor.........Congress told the Army to go pound sand.

 

Fast forward to the Iraq invasion, and the same Congress (Look at the members of the committees.....most of them look very similar 20 years later) harangues the Army about going in unprepared.

 

21st century HMS Clampherdown.