Navistar Defense introduced today the Saratoga light tactical vehicle at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Symposium today. The vehicle is targeted to gap between the projected upgraded High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) Modernized Expanded Capacity Vehicle (MECV) and future Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) programs. The 10 ton vehicle has a payload of 3.2 tons including the four-passengers, plus an optional gunner accommodated in the armor and blast protected cab.
The vehicle has been in development for over a year, and has already gone through extensive testing over more than 25,000 miles and is ready for production. A high degree of commonality with fielded vehicles that incorporate Navistar’s automotive systems. The new Saratoga uses the MaxxForce D6.0L V8 engine, automatic engaging limited slip differentials, Allison 2100 SP 6-SP Automatic Transmission and air independent suspension for added control.
Navistar has designed and tested its own proprietary geometry survivability solution for the vehicle. Navistar offers the vehicle with ballistic protection against small arms threat, mine and IEDs blasts, and other emerging threats. The armor suite employs metallic or ceramic armor with the protection suite designed to meet load limits without sacrificing maneuverability, horse power and torque, or payload capacity. Maintaining the floor height as high as possible was critical for effective blast protection. Therefore, the vehicle’s height was set at 83”. In order to meet the height requirement set by the Navy’s Marine prepositioned ships storage limit, the vehicle uses compressed suspension to ‘Kneel’ down, reducing seven inches to fit into the 76” height of the Navy transport ships. The gross vehicle weight is 9.979 ton (22,000 lbs), with a maximum payload of 3.265 tons (7,200 lbs.) Its length is 5.72 m’ (222”) with the wheel base making 4.01 m’ (158”).
