Recently there is a worldwide trend to transform the heavy troops into more agile and deployable forces. These forces are based on light armored multi-wheeled combat vehicles which are demanding several challenging requirements. Furthermore, the design of suspension system of these vehicles is complex and should provide several conflicting issues such as higher mobility and cornering stability whilst maintaining a sufficient ride comfort for the crew. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of the ride response of a typical combat vehicle in pitch-bounce plan under the effect of random road excitation. A set of mathematical passive suspension models for the vehicle with different configurations including two-axle, three-axle and four-axle are derived. The numerical simulation is carried out through the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment which aids the future development of controllable suspension systems. The ride responses of the vehicle is obtained and analyzed considering the vibration isolation, suspension deflection, and road-holding. The results show an improvement in the responses of vehicle body vertical acceleration, pitch acceleration and
dynamic tire load using four-axle vehicle configuration over three-axle and two-axle ones.