U.S. Army Tests M997A3 Humvee Ambulance for Ship-to-Shore Medical Evacuation in South Korea.

U.S. forces moved an M997A3 Humvee ground ambulance across a temporary Trident Pier at Pohang Port during CJLOTS 2026 on July 9, testing whether an improvised maritime route can evacuate casualties when conventional ports are damaged or unavailable. The drill showed how joint logistics forces could sustain medical movement as well as cargo flow in a contested or infrastructure-denied environment.

The operation combined U.S. Army vehicle control with U.S. Navy ship-to-shore discharge procedures to move the ambulance safely from sea to land without fixed port facilities. This capability could preserve evacuation speed, force endurance, and operational flexibility during high-intensity combat on the Korean Peninsula or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific.

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U.S. Army personnel guide an M997A3 Humvee ambulance across a temporary Trident Pier at Pohang Port during CJLOTS 2026, testing casualty evacuation through an improvised ship-to-shore logistics route (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The available imagery documents several separate actions rather than a complete end-to-end evacuation. A U.S. Navy seaman used hand signals to guide a transport vessel during its approach; personnel from Combat Logistics Regiment 35 discharged a Lighter, Amphibious, Resupply, Cargo, 5-ton vehicle, or LARC-V; another sailor drove a Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement truck ashore; and Army transportation soldiers guided the ambulance along the floating pier. The photographs do not disclose the number of simulated patients, casualty classifications, evacuation time, medical staffing, pier length, cargo throughput, sea state, or distance between the ship, beach-support area, and receiving medical facility. Those omissions matter because the principal measure of an evacuation system is not whether one ambulance can cross a causeway, but how many patients can be collected, stabilized, moved, and transferred per hour while the same narrow route is carrying fuel, ammunition, vehicles, and personnel. The exercise nevertheless tested several necessary components: vessel positioning, marshalling, movement control, vehicle spacing, hand-signal procedures, and coordination between Army transportation personnel and Navy shore-party elements.

The ambulance photographed at Pohang was identified by the Army as a Humvee 2-CT ambulance, corresponding to the M997A3 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle ambulance. It has a gross vehicle weight rating of 12,100 pounds, or 5,488 kilograms, and a rated payload of 3,010 pounds, or 1,365 kilograms. The medical shelter can be arranged for four litter patients, eight ambulatory patients, or a mixed load, in addition to the driver, medical personnel, and treatment equipment. Power comes from a 6.5-liter turbocharged V8 diesel producing 190 horsepower at 3,400 rpm and 380 pound-feet, or 515 newton-meters, of torque at 1,700 rpm. The driveline consists of a four-speed automatic transmission and a two-speed transfer case with a 2.72:1 low-range ratio, while the fuel tank holds 25 U.S. gallons, or 95 liters. These figures describe an ambulance designed for tactical mobility rather than high-speed protected evacuation: its relatively modest power output is offset by low-range gearing and a short wheelbase suitable for damaged roads, beaches and confined port areas.

The M997A3 can ford 30 inches, or 76 centimeters, without preparation and 60 inches, or 152 centimeters, with a deep-water kit. It has a 48.8-degree approach angle, 39-degree departure angle, 25-degree breakover angle, and 12-inch vertical-step capability; a fully loaded vehicle is rated to climb a 60-percent grade and traverse a 40-percent side slope. These characteristics are relevant at a logistics-over-the-shore site because the ambulance may have to transition from a moving causeway onto sand, compacted beach material, or an expedient roadway with abrupt changes in gradient. They do not eliminate handling limitations. The ambulance body is approximately 2.62 meters high, and Army budget documents have specifically identified anti-lock braking and electronic-stability-control retrofits as necessary to reduce rollover and loss-of-control risks. The same documents identify upgraded heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning equipment and an alternating-current inverter as readiness requirements because medical monitors, suction equipment, and other treatment devices need dependable electrical power during movement.

The vehicle’s armament is straightforward: the M997A3 has no integrated turret, remote weapon station or crew-served weapon in the configuration shown at Pohang. No mounted weapon is visible in the released photographs, and Army acquisition literature describes the M997A3 as a noncombat system that was not designed to accept the HMMWV B-kit armor package. Its protective features consist of the ambulance body, basic or advanced armor provisions, environmental control, and an optional gas-particulate filter unit that can support patients wearing protective masks in a nuclear, biological, or chemical environment. The absence of mounted armament is not a missing capability that can be assessed in isolation; it means route security must be supplied by other vehicles, dismounted personnel, surveillance assets, and movement-control measures. On a floating pier, where an ambulance has little room to maneuver or reverse, protection depends primarily on controlling access, reducing time exposed on the causeway, and preventing congestion.

The Trident Pier and associated Improved Navy Lighterage System provide the connection between ships anchored offshore and an undeveloped or degraded shoreline. The Improved Navy Lighterage System is a modular, Sea State 3-capable causeway used to move cargo where conventional port facilities are unavailable or inadequate. The LARC-V adds a five-ton amphibious cargo capacity for movement directly through the surf zone, while the MTVR can carry 7.1 tons off-road and 15 tons on-road and uses independent suspension, traction control, and central tire inflation to operate over soft or broken ground. None of these vehicles is principally an armed combat vehicle; their contribution is measured in lift capacity, cycle time, trafficability, and availability. Their simultaneous presence in the Pohang photographs shows the central planning problem: the same discharge area may have to accommodate amphibious cargo vehicles, loaded trucks, ambulances, and lighterage crews without blocking the flow in either direction.

A realistic casualty movement would require more than driving the ambulance ashore. A medical unit would receive a nine-line evacuation request, establish patient priority and pickup location, dispatch the ambulance, maintain treatment during movement, transfer the patient at a casualty collection point or medical treatment facility, and report vehicle availability for the next mission. Army doctrine distinguishes medical evacuation, using medically staffed and equipped vehicles with en-route care, from casualty evacuation in nonmedical vehicles, which may provide no medical treatment during transit. A 2023 Army exercise using the M997A3 illustrated the practical workload: medics repeatedly reassessed bleeding control, tourniquets, medication, and patient condition as casualties were transferred between ambulance teams. At a logistics-over-the-shore site, every transfer creates delay and handling risk, so the location of the ambulance exchange point and receiving treatment facility directly affects survival and throughput.

The operational value of CJLOTS 2026 therefore lies in identifying constraints before a contingency rather than demonstrating a single vehicle’s performance. A useful evaluation would record pier installation time, daily cargo tonnage, vehicle cycle time, maximum safe traffic density, ambulance response time, patient transfer time, medical-equipment failures, and operations by day, night, and adverse weather. It would also examine whether casualty traffic receives priority without interrupting the movement of fuel and ammunition needed by forces ashore. For the Korean Peninsula, where reinforcement depends heavily on a limited number of major ports, a temporary ship-to-shore route provides redundancy but not equivalent capacity. CJLOTS should consequently be viewed as a method for reducing dependence on fixed infrastructure, not as a direct substitute for a functioning deep-water port.

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