I recently read that alongside the M35A3 ESP trucks, the Army was also considering 5-ton ESP trucks with CAT motors and automatic transmissions. I guess these were going to be standardized as M809A3 trucks? I was wondering if anyone had more information or pictures of these trucks. I don't imagine many were made considering the M900 series trucks seemed to do the same thing already.
The Army toyed with lots of combinations of inventory and off the shelf parts. There are a few prototypes floating around with Cats in them, this XM956 has a 5 ton chassis, 2.,5 ton axles, with a Cat 3208, 5 speed allison, and an M939 cab on it. It even had a 20kw genetator in the drive line, but they didn't go much past that. I'm sure there are many more variants out there but photos are hard to find at best.
Now talking about ESP M809 series there's some articles and drawings of it out there but I've not seen one with a Cat in it. I can't say they never made one but if they did there may be just
one. By the time they would have been considering making an M809A3 the M939 was already in service. Even when the A2 model was approved the development of the FMTV/MTVR platform was underway. They tinkered with repowering and upgrading the M939 series too to make an M939A3 with ISX engine and stuff but all that knowledge went towards that project. The Army went FMTV and the Marines went MTVR. The deciding factor was cost for everything, this was told to me by first hand count of Tom at AM General who worked on the project.
