Kuwait request for Oshkosh heavy trucks approved

[+GKABS 8,796]

The US State Department has approved the sale of heavy trucks worth an estimated USD445 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced on 1 July.

The DSCA said the approval covered a total of 517 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs) and Heavy Equipment Transporters (HETs), both of which are made by Oshkosh, but provided a breakdown that only added up to 369.

This included 188 M985A4 HEMTT Guided Missile Transporters.

100 HEMTT M978A4 fuel tankers.

31 HEMTT M984A4 recovery variants

and 50 M1070A1 HETs.

It also listed 50 Fontaine 635NL trailers for the HETs, 49 Oshkosh M1076A0 Palletised Load System (PLS) trailers

and an unspecified number of Etnyre M1077 flatrack dismountable beds for the PLS trailers.

“Kuwait will use these heavy vehicles to transport and support heavy equipment, including their legacy M1A2 tanks and their new M1A2K main battle tank slated for delivery in 2021,” the DSCA said.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced in July 2020 that the contract to deliver 217 M1A2K tanks to Kuwait had been modified to “adjust the delivery schedule”, putting its estimated completion date back to 30 June 2022. No deliveries have been reported yet.

Kuwait already has an unknown number of HEMTTs: the DoD announced in March 2018 that it had awarded a USD15.4 million contract to Oshkosh to deliver an unspecified number of Guided Missile Transporter, recovery, tractor, and artillery rocket resupply variants to it and Qatar.

[+daddyairplanes 10,261]

never saw the trailers for the PLS's before. but seen plenty of trucks and other stuff loaded on the PLS itself before (including a CSMs Humvee when all the wreckers were full coming back from the field)

funny story: any time we come out of the field we would have to wait on all weapons to be turned in before being released. this included if a vehicle broke down on the autobahn, we'd have to wait on those Soldiers weapons to get back to be released. lead to many times of getting back to our kaserne at 22-2300 and not being released until 0530-6ish the next morning.

one FTX someone has the bright idea to load all the weapons on a PLS coming back. so we wouldnt wait on a few weapons on the side of the road.

guess who broke down.......

[+EricJ 4,254]

Lol that's crazy...

If I remember correctly the arty units had the trailers  for the PLS, mainly for the MLRS if my mind serves me correctly.  Used to see expended pods on them all the time at Fort Hood.

[+daddyairplanes 10,261]

i was in a Paladin BN. not saying they werent there, i just dont remember them.

of course it was damn near 20 years ago. PCS'd from Germany back to a signal unit at Bragg June of '02