A genocide, manufactured in Wisconsin

The SkyStriker UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is a state-of-the-art killing machine. Commonly known as a “suicide drone,” the correct term for this technology in the defense industry is “loitering munition.” A relatively new technology, the Skystriker features a five- or 10-kilogram warhead attached to an airplane-shaped body that dives kamikaze-style into its target at a speed of 300 knots.

Elbit Systems, the Israel-based manufacturer of SkyStriker drones, advertises its product as a “silent, invisible, and surprise attacker.” According to researchers at the military watchdog group Airwars, SkyStriker drones are so accurate that the Israeli military has used them to target “individual tents” in Gaza.

In April 2025, Airwars documented a case in Beit Lahia, Gaza, where a SkyStriker martyred an entire family of six, including four children. That same month they were used in attacks on Jabaliya refugee camp, the largest refugee camp in Gaza that is now mostly flattened.

A key feature of SkyStriker drones, according to Elbit Systems’ brochure on the product, is the benefit of so-called “single-truck mobility.” This means that a drone can be transported and launched from the back of a single truck. These trucks come in two classes: HEMTT (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck) and FMTV (Family of Medium Tactical Vehicle.)

Both are manufactured right in our backyards, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. 

Wisconsin and the business of genocide

Oshkosh Corporation, a global industrial manufacturer named after and headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, supplies the Israeli military with hundreds of millions of dollars in military vehicles. These vehicles come in three classes: HEMTT and FMTV trucks are large and can be outfitted with Precise and Universal Launching System (PULS) rocket launchers, which are used to fire missiles and other artillery including suicide drones. The third class, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV), are lighter and comparable to the familiar Humvee. As Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza has progressed over the past two years, Oshkosh Corp. has only doubled down on its Israeli contracts.

In December 2023, almost immediately after the current assault on Gaza began, Oshkosh Corp. signed a major deal to sell JLTVs to the Israeli military. Seventy-five trucks were sold as part of a Foreign Military Sale, which requires approval by the U.S. State Department and is thus thoroughly documented. The rest were sold through Direct Commercial Sale, a more private transaction where key details such as the quantity of trucks and timetable of delivery are not made public.

Then, in August 2024, almost a year into Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, the U.S. State Department approved a $583.1 million sale of Oshkosh Corp.’s FMTVs to Israel. This follows a previous FMTV contract between Oshkosh Corp. and Israel from 2017 worth $200 million.

As for the HEMTT vehicles, the details of the sales are mostly private, but shipments are ongoing. Investigative journalists with the Danish group Danwatch have uncovered shipping ledgers detailing at least 453 shipments of HEMTT parts to ports in Israel between September 2023 and September 2024.

Oshkosh Corp. continues to play a fundamental role in the genocide of Palestinians while profiting in the hundreds of millions. Israel’s military strategy for Gaza consists almost entirely of aerial bombardment through missile and drone strikes. The HEMTT and FMTV trucks, manufactured by Oshkosh Corp., serve as the mobile rocket launchers in these attacks.

Oshkosh Corp.’s trucks are also used to transport captured Palestinian civilians by the dozens. In one video obtained by Al Jazeera, dozens of Palestinian men are seen bound, with bags covering their heads, riding in the open bed of what appears to be Oshkosh Corp.’s M1085s, a type of FMTV.

While Oshkosh Corp. was accepting its starring role in Israel’s genocidal war, it promised Wisconsin journalists that it planned to get out of the military business. At an event in November 2023, less than one month before its JLTV deal with Israel was announced, Oshkosh Corp. CEO John Pfeifer told The Cap Times that the company would be “decreasing” its military vehicle production in the future. After nearly two years of shipping military equipment to an active genocide, Pfeiffer either made a wild misestimation about his own company or knowingly lied. 

The Wisconsin-based manufacturer’s ongoing involvement in the Gaza genocide has not gone unnoticed. Over a year ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council directly called upon Oshkosh Corp. as well as other military contractors to cease arms transfers to Israel outright. The United Nations does not shy away from using the word “genocide” to describe the acts committed using Oshkosh Corp. vehicles. Earlier this month, Norway’s largest private pension fund divested from Oshkosh Corp. over connections to the Gaza genocide.

Media representatives for Oshkosh Corp. did not respond when reached for comment about the UN’s call to stop military vehicle transfers or Pfeifer’s pledge to decrease production.

A shifting business model, and a shifting military strategy

To say that Oshkosh Corp. has doubled down on Israeli contracts during the Gaza genocide only partly describes its business strategy. The case may be that Oshkosh Corp. has actually become reliant on Israel’s money.

In the past three years, the military contractor has fallen on hard times. Oshkosh Corp. has historically been a key supplier of JLTVs to the U.S. Army, but in 2023 they lost an $8 billion JLTV contract to AM General, a rival manufacturer. This year, the U.S. Army announced they would be discontinuing purchases of JLTVs entirely. For the foreseeable future, Oshkosh Corp. will not be able to make any money selling JLTVs, a signature product, to its biggest customer.

The U.S. military phasing out Oshkosh Corp.’s JLTV trucks is indicative of a shift in grand strategy. According to Bill Hartung, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, “we’re unlikely to fight a land war with China.” This reality makes surface vehicles like JLTVs an unattractive long term investment for the U.S. Army. The era of the light military vehicle is over, and as Hartung explains, the writing is on the wall:

“In Iraq, vehicles that weren’t very well armored were vulnerable. In Ukraine, [Russians] were taking out tanks with suicide drones. There seems to be a little bit of a bias towards drones and air power. It could be that [the U.S. Army] is looking at the kinds of conflicts that the U.S. could be involved in and seeing less of a use for ground vehicles.”

If China is the focus, then JLTVs quickly become irrelevant. Without massive JLTV contracts from the U.S. Army, Oshkosh Corp. has to find new clients that are interested in fighting land wars. That includes Israel

Hope for change and the value of public opinion

Hartung, who has studied the American arms industry for decades, remains hopeful that a popular peace movement could pressure Oshkosh Corp. to move away from profiting off Israel’s genocide. He looks to successful anti-war protests of the past.

In 2016, the manufacturing conglomerate Textron stopped sales of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia after Human Rights Watch documented cases of these munitions being used against civilians. Hartung believes the local protest effort played a significant role in compelling Textron to change its policy. Similarly during the Vietnam War, a grassroots-pressure campaign halted Dow Chemical’s production of Agent Orange, the deadly chemical compound that caused generations of death and disease in Vietnam. The most famous of the protests against Dow occurred on UW-Madison’s campus in 1967. It took a broad-based, grassroots protest movement to disentangle UW-Madison’s campus from the manufacture of Agent Orange and the horrific war crimes associated with the compound. It would take a similar movement to disentangle Oshkosh, Wisconsin from Oshkosh Corp., the genocide profiteer.

Such direct-action campaigns have emerged elsewhere but face harsh resistance from Israel-aligned governments. Britain-based Palestine Action organizes protests and disruptive actions targeting a number of major military manufacturers, including Elbit Systems, the Israeli manufacturer of the suicide drone. In June, the group successfully entered the Brize Norton Royal Air Force base and decommissioned two aircrafts. As Palestine Action now faces a terrorism charge from the UK government, hundreds of Brits have taken to the streets in protest. 

Oshkosh Corp. and its subsidiaries employ roughly 6,100 people in the state of Wisconsin, but that does not mean they harbor any loyalty to the Oshkosh community. In 2021, the company was awarded a roughly $6 billion contract to manufacture Next Generation Delivery Vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service, but quickly announced this new promising product line would be built in South Carolina—presumably to avoid working with Wisconsin’s labor unions. 

At its current pace, Oshkosh Corp. will only deepen ties with the Israeli military in the coming years. After losing out on billions of dollars in U.S. Army contracts in 2023, Oshkosh Corp. chose to look to Israel to recoup losses. By doing so, the company married its future to the Israeli military and other JLTV customers. It does not benefit the people of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, that their local manufacturing economy is dependent on the prospect of land wars occurring in Eurasia.

Every time Israel murders a family of six with a suicide drone, that drone may have been fired using a Wisconsin-made HEMTT. Every time a Palestinian teenager is starved to death in Israeli captivity, he may have been carried to that prison in a Wisconsin-made FMTV. Every time the Israeli military fires on a group of starving refugees in a food line, those soldiers will soon ride home safely in their Wisconsin-made JLTV. 

As Bill Hartung says, “It’s our tax money and labor. That means it’s being done in our name.”