Tangles Over Tires
THE ARMY SAYS IT WANTS TO PROVIDE SPECIAL OPS UNITS WITH THE TIRES THEY WANT. BUT BUREAUCRACY AND LOGISTICS CAN GET IN THE WAY.
If a special operations unit wants a specific kind of tire for a specific off-road application, what are the chances it can get hold of it? The most accurate answer to that question probably is, not anymore.
Currently, all tires are supposed to be procured through the Defense Logistics Agency’s Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC) from lists of products tested and approved by the U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM). The management of the Army’s tire supply chain in the process of being privatized, but TACOM’s central role in tire testing and selection will remain unchanged.
Special ops forces have been known to skirt the Army’s acquisition bureaucracy and get their preferred tires on their ground mobility vehicles. But that was before a certain unofficial tire became so popular that it appeared on TACOM’s radar screen.
The Army’s official line is that special operations get the highest priority for tire testing and approval. But that doesn’t mean the tires that the special ops units want will be approved. One reason for tire failure might be that TACOM tests for a broader scope of applications than intended by the special ops unit.
Tire experts say that special ops units ought to seek tires that suit the particular mission at hand. But the issue is more complicated than that. If a tire is to be used on multiple terrains, for example, it may not be possible to provide the optimal tire for each and every circumstance a vehicle will encounter.
In 2001, Mike Cooney, a master sergeant with a U.S. Army special operations unit who has since retired, was overseeing a ground vehicle mobility project using a modified Humvee when he concluded that the Goodyear tire the Army had provided was substandard for his requirements. “Most military movements are over the road rather than cross country,” Cooney commented. “But a lot of driving in special operations is done off road.”
Cooney went through a selection process and identified an alternative tire, the Super Swamper, manufactured by Interco Tires of Rayne, La. “It wasn’t specifically built for us,” Cooney related, “but we did ask for a special size and they told us they could do it.”
The main difference between the Super Swamper and the Army’s tire is that the Super Swamper is a bias ply tire while the Goodyears were radials. In recent years, the trend has been away from bias plies and towards radials, according to Will Leaman president, BCDS Inc., a defense contractor headquartered in Roanoke, Va., specializing in off-road driver training.
“Radials have taken over the passenger tire market because they offer a significantly smoother ride and give significantly longer tread wear,” he said. “From an industrial or off-road perspective, bias plies still have a place because their thicker sidewalls resist puncture and rolling. But the quality of their ride and handling are lower than radials and they also reduce fuel economy.”
But in this case, the bias ply tire fit the bill, according to Cooney. “Radials will generally last longer,” he acknowledged, for 40,000 to 60,000 miles versus 20,000 to 30,000 miles for bias ply. But bias ply’s better load-carrying characteristics and puncture resistance put them over the top.
“The radials were blowing out all the time,” Cooney said. “They had no puncture protection against driving on sharp rocks. The Super Swamper did not puncture as easily and when they did they were reparable. The Army tire just got ripped apart.”
As a result of Cooney’s evaluation, a number of special operations units, operating perhaps one thousand vehicles, chose to replace the Army tires with the Super Swamper without going through DSCC or TACOM. “That was way below the radar,” Cooney said. “It was no burden to the Army and nobody seemed to care.” The Army was actually saving money on the deal, he added: in 2003, the Army was paying as much as $235 per tire for Goodyears but only $185 for the Super Swampers.
All this occurred before September 11, 2001. After that date, and with the run-up to the invasion of Afghanistan, things changed markedly, recalled Boo Leblanc, a marketing official with Interco. Before the terror attacks, the company would get military orders for tires in the dozens, but afterwards, “things got into high gear within a month,” Leblanc said. “The phones started ringing off the hook and it didn’t stop for at least a year.” The company received orders for hundreds of tires and tens of thousands of dollars at a pop.
Most of the calls came from special ops units looking to purchase tires on their government credit cards, according to Leblanc. “We feel that people using our stuff back home might have told military people they knew of a better tire, a tire that outperforms Goodyear in certain circumstances,” he said.
Interco is a small tire manufacturer specializing in off-road tires that can withstand the rigors of everything from rocks to mud. Leblanc described the Super Swamper as an “old time” type of bias ply tire, one made of thicker and much tougher material than the currently popular radials. Those older tires can accommodate lugs in the sidewalls, for example, a feature impossible to build into the thinner radial tire. Because Interco is small and specialized, it doesn’t need manufacturing runs of thousands of tires to make a sale worthwhile.
“We could pop in a run of fifty and get it out,” Leblanc said. “Our company strategy is not to be number one but to have our own niche in the marketplace.” Moreover, he added, the larger manufacturers have discarded their tooling for bias ply tire manufacturing.
Before September 11, Interco was approached by TACOM to have its tire tested at the companys expense. “If we passed we possibly could get a government contract, and if we failed we were out the money,” said Leblanc. “We didn’t think it was worth it. After 9/11, all that went out the window,” he continued. “It seemed like TACOM said it was okay to get whatever works.”
The Super Swamper was eventually tested by TACOM, a test paid for by USSOCOM, and it failed. But Leblanc complained that Interco never saw the test results nor under what conditions of speed or tire pressure the tires were tested at.
Off-road operations typically proceed at much lower speeds than highway movements. In addition, tire performance is enhanced off-road when tire pressure is reduced, according to Will Leaman. “At low speeds and on soft or rough terrain, you want to reduce tire pressure in order to increase the contact patch and the tractability of the tire,” he explained.
Why might a tire beloved by special ops units get rejected by TACOM? Leaman’s comments provide a clue: that they may not have been tested under the conditions for which they were intended.
Matthew Geary, BRAC tire privatization project manager at DSCC, the agency that acquires tires for Army units across the board, claimed that TACOM and the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) are sensitive to the needs of special operations. “They want to give special ops units what they want,” he said. Geary is in charge of managing a pending solicitation which will chose a private contractor to manage the Army’s tire supply chain, a process mandated by the BRAC recommendations of 2005.
Might the Interco tire have failed because of TACOM and TARDEC’s testing methodologies? “Tires are used in a variety of circumstances,” Geary explained, “and before they are approved they need to make sure they perform across a spectrum of uses. A tire may be used off-road one day and on a highway the next. This can cause different performance characteristics.”
DSCC’s job, is to “buy what they approve,” Geary noted, referring to TACOM and TARDEC. “We will become involved in the process to make sure they take our customers’ wishes seriously,” he added, “but the bottom line is that we cannot buy a tire that has not been approved.”
Geary also acknowledged that “TARDEC tries to go to the primary manufacturers,” Goodyear, Michelin and Bridgestone Firestone, and that “they go with the tire that gives them better performance and that is tracking toward radials.”
Leaman agreed that radials will provide better performance on the highway, but “in a pure off-road situation I recommend bias ply,” he said. Leblanc, for his part, admitted that the Super Swamper could not match the performance of a radial tire on the highway.
The instruction provided by Leaman’s company is geared primarily toward acquisition of vehicles and tires by special op units after they arrive in country. “We instruct them on what tires work best on different types of terrain,” he explained. For example, a heavy lugged tire is good in mud and on rocks but not in sand. The lugs provide a self-cleaning mechanism to remove mud from the tread bars so that they are clean when they come back down to the contact patch. Operating on snow and ice calls for a tire with siping, small razor cuts in the surface of the tread to provide additional traction on snow and ice.
“If operating in mixed conditions of pavement, sand, dirt and rocks I would recommend radials, and if operating at high speed, then definitely radials,” Leaman added. “On the other hand, if you’re going to be in the boonies for a long period of time, bias plies might be best because of their puncture resistance.”
The issue of tire selection, for Leaman, is not a cut and dry decision, but one that requires the balancing of several factors. Not so for Mike Cooney, who insists that “you need different kinds of tires just like you have different kinds of shoes.” He blasted the Army logistics types for providing only one option “because it makes it simpler for them logistically.”
The upshot of the Super Swamper episode was that, after some give and take, the tires were pulled off the Humvees and replaced with standard Army issue.
Interco, meanwhile, has soured of doing business with the U.S. Army. But that’s not to say that its entire military business is kaput. Boo Leblanc stated that defense organizations in Canada, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Kuwait all buy Interco tires for their off-road needs. ♦