Newly greenlit Infantry Squad Vehicle has motorsport genes

The Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) will be the United States Army‘s next step in light utility vehicles for General Motors after receiving approval for full-rate production from the branch’s Program Executive Officer for Combat Support & Combat Service Support on 30 March. Perhaps what makes the ISV unique, however, is that much of its lineage and development process comes with input from the racing world.

The nine-man vehicle is the brainchild of GM Defense LLC, a subsidiary of General Motors, and Ricardo PLC. It is based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 pickup truck, with ninety percent of the ISV using commercially available off-the-shelf parts that regular consumers can purchase for themselves. Still, the average civilian will spot obvious differences between the two such as the lack of a roof and doors.

The Colorado ZR2, a spin-off of the Colorado and GMC Canyon, was designed with off-roading capabilities in mind and met much of the Army’s demands such as durability in extreme heat. GM Defense also has an electric version called the ZH2.

Introduced in 2020 when GM Defense won the Army contract, the ISV was developed with input from General Motors’ Chevrolet racing division spearheaded by NASCAR Cup Series team Hendrick Motorsports and off-road programme Chad Hall Racing.

A factory driver for Chevrolet, Chad Hall races a ZR2 in Best In The Desert and other desert events like the Mint 400, winning the latter’s Mini/Mid-Size Stock Production Truck class in March. His ZR2 is fully stock save for certain modifications to meet racing safety regulations, including a suspension system and spool valve shocks developed by Multimatic Dynamic Suspensions. Shock and suspension data collected from Hall’s racing were then applied to the ISV, which he described in 2021 as a “really cost-effective way to expedite the development of products.”

Hall’s late father Rod Hall is the only driver to compete in the first fifty Baja 1000s from 1967 to 2017. The younger Hall currently oversees Rod Hall Products, who builds suspension systems for military vehicles like Humvees.

Meanwhile, one might not think of stock car racing as a good litmus test for Army trucks, but both have specially built frames to protect their occupants. More than familiar with doing it for their Chevrolet Camaro ZL1s, Hendrick Motorsports’ role in the project has been to build the chrome-moly steel exoskeleton and Roll Over Protection System (ROPS) surrounding the ISV using roll cages from stock ZR2s. The ISV’s frame can fold to allow it to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, though transport can also be done through a sling system off a UH-60 Black Hawk and air drops from a C-130 Hercules or C-17 Globemaster III.

The ZR2 is built in Mooresville and Concord, North Carolina, both home to a plethora of NASCAR teams including HMS.

Despite the racing pedigrees of its creators, the ISV has undergone a tumultuous history marked by a poor assessment from the Pentagon’s Operational Testing and Evaluation division in January 2022. The OT&E’s report elucidated multiple concerns about vulnerabilities that arose during testing, ranging from poor performance if it were to go up against a “near-peer threat” in combat to soldier discomfort when riding and difficulties in quickly exiting while wearing full gear. The issues forced General Motors to push back their calendar by a year before finally receiving approval from the Army.

“Our flexibility during the pursuit of the ISV helped us win the early stages of the contract award and has since played a pivotal role in delivering the best value solution to the U.S. Army,” commented GM Defense vice president of product development and advanced engineering Rick Kewley. “Not only did customer feedback make the ISV better at an accelerated pace, but it also helped us bring to bear the engineering and manufacturing expertise from our parent company, General Motors, to add new capabilities while fulfilling the Army’s design and performance requirements. We remain confident in our ability to meet higher production quantities in the future.”

In its current form, the ISV has a 3,200-pound payload capacity. Its 2.8-litre turbo diesel engine is capable of 275 horsepower. Over 300 ISVs have been delivered to the Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.

The ISV is not the only instance of military vehicle overlapping with motorsport. A variant of the Storm Search and Rescue Tactical Vehicle, currently used by the United States Air Force for search-and-rescue operations, called the MDD-1 and MDD-2 was developed by Chip Ganassi Racing for use as rescue trucks in Extreme E in 2022; incidentally, CGR is a former NASCAR team and Hendrick technical ally.

Follow @TCFoffroad: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram