MANNHEIM, Germany –
The Humvee has been the go to vehicle for Soldiers since it replaced the Jeep in the ‘80s, but now there’s a new sheriff in town and the Army Prepositioned Stock-2 site in Mannheim is the first APS site in the world to receive the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.
The 405th Army Field Support Brigade’s Army Field Support Battalion-Mannheim began receiving the new vehicles about two weeks ago. Compared to the Humvee, JLTVs have a greater survivability rate and a greater payload. They are also more fuel efficient and highly reliable. Over the course of the next few weeks, AFSBn-Mannheim will receive over 650 JLTVs at its Coleman APS-2 site.
Quentin Rodriguez is the director of supply at the APS-2 site at Coleman. He is responsible for overseeing the accountability of all vehicles and equipment as well as all repair parts, maintenance items and supplies that support the two Armored Brigade Combat Team APS-2 sets located at the site.
“Over the last few days, we’ve been receiving these new JLTVs as part of U.S. Army Sustainment Command’s efforts to refresh and revitalize the APS fleets around the world,” said Rodriquez, who has served with ASC for 13 years and just returned from a two-year tour in Afghanistan. “We’re the first APS site to receive the JLTVs, and we also recently received the new and improved M109 Paladins as well as the latest and greatest M1 Abrams tanks.”
Providing a modernized, technically-superior fleet of vehicles and equipment at the APS site is extremely important to warfighters, said Rodriguez, who served as an engineer on active duty before becoming an Army civilian employee.
“The JLTVs provide a level of survivability that Humvees do not provide,” he said.
Initially, the JLTVs were stored at a holding yard in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where they were manufactured. The JLTVs were transported by cargo liners and transport ships from the U.S. to Bremerhaven, Germany, and are being line hauled by transport trucks to Coleman worksite, their new home as part of the 405th AFSB’s APS-2 program.
“We’re receiving roughly 650 JLTVs over the next three months,” said Rodriguez. “We’re about two weeks into the receiving process, and we’re already starting to de-process many of the vehicles. We’re getting these JLTVs ready to go and starting to install the combat enablers into these vehicles.”
All the APS-2 vehicles are maintained in a configure for combat status, Rodriguez said, so part of process includes taking the JLTVs out of storage for shipment mode and installing the combat enablers – the radios and communications suites as well as the tracking devices commanders use to survey and assess the battlefield.
Once the configuration for combat installs are complete “we’ll do a complete joint inventory with the project manager just to make sure we have all the end items that are needed when we issue these equipment pieces out to the warfighters,” said Rodriguez, a native of Moline, Illinois.
“We’ll then place them into our maintenance fleet and rotate them through, making sure that we keep them at a high readiness posture to where they can roll out the gate and engage at any time,” he added.
The JLTV family of vehicles is an Army-led, joint-service program designed to replace a portion of each service’s light tactical wheeled vehicle fleets while closing an existing capability gap, according to ASC’s website. The JLTV will provide protected, sustained, networked mobility for personnel and payloads across a full range of military operations and will restore the fleet’s balance of payload, performance and protection. To learn more about the JLTV family of vehicles, go to https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/cs-css-joint-light-tactical-vehicle/.
The 405th AFSB’s APS-2 program helps to reduce deployment timelines, improves deterrence capabilities and provides additional combat power for contingency operations. APS-2 equipment may also be drawn for use in training and exercises like DEFENDER-Europe 21. Each of the 405th AFSB’s APS-2 sites has the capability to house and maintain at least an ABCT’s worth of equipment as well as engineer, artillery, military police, sustainment and medical capabilities. The APS-2 program enhances U.S. Army Europe and Africa’s readiness and capability to support the warfighter while simultaneously promoting stability and security in the region.
The 405th AFSB is assigned to ASC and under the operational control of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, USAREUR-AF. The brigade is headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and provides materiel enterprise support to U.S. Forces throughout Europe and Africa – providing theater sustainment logistics; synchronizing acquisition, logistics and technology; and leveraging the U.S. Army Materiel Command materiel enterprise to support joint forces. For more information on the 405th AFSB, visit the official website at www.afsbeurope.army.mil and the official Facebook site at www.facebook.com/405thAFSB.