By Carlo Munoz
Marine Corps acquisition officials plan to issue a request for information (RFI) to industry this week for its follow-on effort to develop a new amphibious vehicle to replace the recently cancelled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program, a senior service official said yesterday.
“I am cautiously optimistic that it will be this week” for the release of the highly-anticipated RFI, Assistant Marine Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford. Members of the service’s requirements development directorate briefed Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter on the specifics of the pending RFI on Monday, Dunford added after said his presentation at an Aviation Week-sponsored event in Washington.
With the release of the RFI, Marine Corps officials anticipate reaching initial operating capability for the new amphibious vehicle within the next four to seven years, Lt. Gen. John Wissler, deputy commander for Marine Corps programs and resources, said at the same event.
Both dismissed recent news reports that had placed the vehicle’s anticipated IOC date at 2024. “We absolutely are not waiting 14 years for a new amphibious fighting vehicle,” Dunford said. Noting that it takes, on average, between eight to 12 years to take a program from design to the field, according to Dunford. But after consulting with DoD acquisition officials, and their own requirements and procurement cadres, the service “is confident we can beat that,” he added.
The release of the RFI is the first step toward the establishment of a formal program of record to develop and field a new amphibious combat vehicle for the Marine Corps. The effort comes less than a month after Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos opted to terminate the service’s initial attempt to field a new landing vehicle.
After excessive cost overruns and schedule setbacks in the program, the EFV was canceled as a way to garner $35 billion in savings within the service and redistribute those dollars into more urgent warfighter needs. That $35 billion was also part of a larger, DoD-wide effort spearheaded by Gates to generate $100 billion in cost savings over the next five years.
But in spite of those savings, Amos reiterated that the program cancellation had left a critical requirements gap in the service’s portfolio. “Despite the best efforts of all involved, the EFV program became too onerous, [but] the cancellation of the EFV is by no means a rejection of the Marine Corps amphibious assault mission,” Amos said during a Jan. 13 speech at the Surface Navy Warfare’s annual symposium in Arlington, Va. (Defense Daily, Jan. 14).
To that end, Amos had publicly stated that he would like to see the EFV replacement effort put on the same acquisition fast track that DoD put the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Such an approach would not only allow the Marine Corps to fill a critical combat requirement quickly, but also validate the amphibious assault mission as the Defense Department did with the counter-improvised explosive device mission via the MRAP.
But the only link between the MRAP program and the EFV replacement effort is the time it took to get the MRAP into the hands of soldiers and Marines in the field.
“The only fair analogy to the MRAP approach is simply how long it took to field the MRAP,” Dunford said, adding there was not “a specific correlation between the acquisition process…that caused us to field the MRAP and the new amphibious vehicle.”
A key element to expediting the development of the new EFV replacement is to more closely align the requirements and procurment divsions within the Marine Corps, so all sides have a clear understanding of what he platform needs to do and how it will be bought, according to Dunford.
“We are making trade-offs very early in the program…and again it is up to us, the senior leaders, to take a look at what is available today, what is good enough,” Dunford said, “We may not get a Cadillac, we may get an Impala but it will accomplish the mission.”