The Marine Corps expects to kickstart stalled plans this fall to begin developing an amphibious vehicle to replace the troubled and now-defunct Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) effort, the service’s top general said yesterday.
Even though the Pentagon already completed an analysis of alternatives (AoA) on a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) last year, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos said he wants to collect more information from industry later this year before moving forward with developing the vehicle.
Amos said during a presentation at the Brookings Institution think tank that the ACV’s AoA “confirmed the requirement for an amphibious vehicle, a tractor…some type of surface-borne capability that you could use, both in a combat environment (and) for a forcible-entry kind of thing if you ever have to do that again.”
Yet Amos said that detailed analysis of alternatives–which was conducted at the Office of the Secretary of Defense level–didn’t conclude whether the ACV would have a slow or high speed. The previous EFV vehicle, which faced technical and cost setbacks, was intended to quickly transport troops from ship to shore by skimming the surface of the water. Amos acknowledged Wednesday the difficulty of developing a heavy amphibious vehicle that can quickly travel along the surface of the water.
Thus, he told the Washington crowd, after the AoA was done he said: “Let’s go back….We’re only going to get one more bite at this apple. We want to do it right.” He told officials last year he wanted to “make sure that we understand the difference (between)…(and) the value (of)….a high-water-speed and a displacement vehicle,’” which is like a boat that doesn’t travel along the water’s surface.
So, the Marine Corps is working with two companies that are expected to report to it this fall regarding “what the art of the possible is with regards to high-water speed versus (a) regular displacement vehicle, and then what the cost is,” Amos said.
“I made it clear to everybody, cost is a variable in this,” he said. “We canceled the EFV because of cost and because of a host of other things. But I’m not about to go do it again. And so we want to get it right. And I’m confident that by the time we hit the fall, I’ll have enough information to be able to actually make an educated recommendation to the Secretary of the Navy as to how to proceed.”
He predicted that the Marine Corps will “make a decision in the fall” and “then probably around the beginning of next year” release a request for proposals (RFP) to companies to propose possible vehicles.
The Marine Corps has budgeted research and development monies in its five-year budget for the ACV, though it has not pegged any procurement monies for actually buying the vehicles.