The Humvee was never intended to function as a front line vehicle. It's just been pressed into that duty because the Army doesn't have anything between the Humvee and the Bradley. Using a full IFV for patrolling annoys the locals, is expensive and limits the number of patrols you can do too much.

It looks like a reasonable design, but there have been several MRAP vehicles put into testing or small scale production over the last few years. None has been widely successful yet, apparently the ones tough enough to the larger bombs are also too expensive, slow or otherwise have problems.

It looks like this one is going to larger scale production, but that the 1.05 Billion dollar contract is only for 2244 units. That makes them 3 to 4 times more expensive then a Humvee, and that is not large scale production really. Total Humvee's produced is something on the order of 75000 and they are being shipped to Afghanistan and Iraq by the hundreds.

Jay