Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2022 - 33

U.S. ARMY
Q&A
The current M1 Abrams remains the best battle
tank in the world, asserts Pittard, but the U.S.
Army knows its heavy fuel consumption is a
battlefield and logistics deficit.
immature battlefield with no charging
infrastructure? " Pittard said. " We will
eventually get there, but that's a
reach, at least in the near term. "
Hybrid-electric is a more promising
near-term solution. " Allison has selfinvested
in a new electric hybrid
cross-drive transmission, the first of
its kind, that will be produced in
America to meet requirements for
infantry fighting vehicles and main
battle tanks in both the U.S. and
around the world, " Pittard said, noting
that the hybrid transmission is Allison's largest investment in
a defense product in the company's 107-year history.
Allison has teamed with the Army's Ground Vehicle
" Can we field an allelectric
tactical vehicle on
an immature battlefield
with no charging
infrastructure? " Pittard
posed. The answer:
not anytime soon.
Systems Center (GVSC) to develop the next-generation electrified
transmission. The initial model has been built to meet
requirements for the Army's Optionally Manned Fighting
Vehicle (OMFV), which will eventually replace nearly 3,000
aging legacy Bradley vehicles. Pittard announced at SAE
COMVEC for the first time publicly that the propulsion solution
is called eGen Force.
American Rheinmetall Vehicles has selected the hybrid
transmission for integration into its OMFV offering. eGen
Force features a 220-kW electric motor and associated inverter
for onboard vehicle power and parallel hybrid-electric
operation. In addition to power generation, the system provides
" true engine-off mobility that reduces detection, both
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
acoustic and thermal - silent mobility
to an extent, as silent as you can get
with a tank, " Pittard said. " It'll increase
soldier survivability. "
" Electrification is truly the future of
defense vehicles, " Pittard stressed.
Highlights of the Q&A session that
followed his keynote:
What are the advantages of all-electric
vehicles in the battlefield?
Well, huge advantages. A big one is
fuel - less fuel. We watch fuel trucks
get hit by enemy fire, blowing up, and seeing vehicles stranded
because of that. So that can be helpful. Now, there's another
side to that, and that is the battery dilemma - for an
Abrams tank, the number of batteries it would take for it to be
all electric. There are ways around that as far as charging
those batteries. We know some militaries - competitors - are
out there completely moving out the battery pack and just
putting a new battery pack in these huge vehicles. That [battery
swapping] is something that hopefully the U.S. Army is
also looking at doing. There are pros and cons, but to be allelectric,
you would save so much logistically as far as just fuel.
Are there other areas of technology that defense is investing in?
Heck yeah, a lot of things, whether it's hypersonics, cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity really is the next battlefield overall. One
more thing on that, the Department of Defense is also investing
October 2022 33
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2022

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