Army infantry units have recognized the utility of the Infantry Squad Vehicle beyond its core task of carrying troops into battle, leading the service to consider additional configurations of the ride, according to a senior service official.
“We have a nine-seat variant,” Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, of the Army G-8 staff, told Defense News in an interview at the Pentagon. “We know that’s not the right configuration or the only configuration.”
The GM Defense-built ISV is in the inventory of three Brigade Combat Teams, where soldiers have put the vehicles to the test in large-scale training rotations. Earlier this year, the Army shipped several vehicles to remote islands in the Pacific where Defense News observed one being driven onto a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during an exfiltration mission.
The Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence is now compiling lessons learned. “We are looking at what do we need. A five-seater for a kind of reconnaissance version? Do we need some sort of weapons carrier? I know eventually we’re probably going to get into some launched effects capabilities on there. I’m assuming that’s the direction we’re going.”
GM Defense won the contract to build ISV in June 2020. The program was approved for full-rate production in April 2023 and the Army currently plans to buy a total of 2,593 ISVs over the course of the program. Many of the vehicles have been delivered to the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.
While the Army has only purchased the troop carrier variant, the Canadian Army is a customer of the utility version that allows for flexible space in the back to add various weapon systems. Ottawa has purchased 100 of the vehicles to take on deployment to Europe as part of the country’s NATO mission, JD Johnson, GM Defense vice president of business development, said last month.
Canada is the lead nation in Latvia for an alliance troop presence there aimed at deterring a Russian attack.
“We built a version of the ISV that is a utility vehicle because what we found out really quickly, and we knew that the troops would, is their soldiers all jump into ISVs and take off and, guess what, their mortars or counter-[unmanned aircraft systems], that stuff can’t keep up with them,” JD Johnson said.
GM Defense officials said they were confident the Army would similarly find the utility variant useful as part of the program of record, or the overall buy. “That’s very clear. They’ve signaled that strongly. Now they just have to get through their bureaucratic humps to get there,” Pete Johnson, vice president of business development for integrated vehicles, said.
The company is also seeing a growing international interest. GM Defense is planning to enter the ISV in a U.K. competition centered on land mobility. The British Army has already test-driven the vehicles at the National Training Center at the beginning of the year, according to JD Johnson.
The United Arab Emirates also wants to buy them, JD Johnson said. “We have a tender from them right now. Angola wants to buy them. We have a tender from them right now. There are countries that are struggling with their own capacity as everybody is upgrading their militaries. You see this as a way for contributing to Ukraine,” he added. “We’ve had inquiries from a couple different countries saying, ‘If we could buy 100 or so vehicles, how quickly could we get them?’”
The ISV, which is produced in Concord, North Carolina, was built with plenty of room to grow, JD Johnson noted. “If you were to go to Concord right now, you’d see in the neighborhood of 60 of these vehicles there waiting to be delivered to a customer.”
The other services are also considering the ISV for things like base defense, in the case of the Air Force, and for other things like rescue missions, Pete Johnson said.
At the Association of the U.S. Army, GM Defense is showing the ISV’s potential role in the Army’s push to establish human-machine integrated formations. The ISV on the exposition floor will be set up as a control vehicle for a robotics and autonomy platoon that is towing a Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport robot and hauling a Silent Tactical Energy Enhanced Dismount military cart, or STEED.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
