By Emelie Rutherford
Two congressmen who help dictate funding for the Marine Corps’ developmental Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) said they have concerns about its design that could impact their support for the program.
House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) told Defense Daily last week one of his “biggest concerns” with the developmental EFV is its flat bottom, because he’d prefer an underbelly-explosion-deflecting V-shaped bottom like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) has. The EFV program is “on the bubble,” he said, meaning it is in danger of being cut.
Reps. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), the chairman and former ranking member of the House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee, have been calling for nearly two years for the Marine Corps to redesign the EFV with a V-hull. The service, in response, has crafted an armor appliqu� that can be removed from the vehicle’s underside, and argued the laws of physics require the amphibious vehicle have a flat bottom to allow it to skim the water’s surface at desired speeds.
Murtha said he shares Taylor’s reservations about the vehicle’s hull, which Taylor also reiterated last Wednesday.
“The biggest concerns are the protection underneath, which is flat plate, and they would try to put a (removable) steel plate–attach it to it–when they get to shore, instead of (having) a V-shape” bottom, Murtha said Thursday, two days after his panel grilled a senior Marine Corps official on the matter.
“It just doesn’t sound right to me,” he said. “Everything we’ve gotten to has been a V-bottom and is much higher” off the ground.
Murtha said he also is concerned about the pace and cost of the EFV program, which has been under contract with General Dynamics [GD] since 1996. After reliability shortfalls with prototypes and a Nunn-McCurdy cost breach in 2007, the Marine Corps restructured the program. The service recently received approval to build seven redesigned prototypes, which were placed under contract with General Dynamics last summer.
“I’ll take a hard look at it,” Murtha said about the EFV effort, noting $4 billion in costs thus far. “The Marine Corps (is) going to have to assure us that this thing is going to get some attention, it’s not going to just be funded every year and then (it’s) another 18 years before anything happens.”
At a HAC-D hearing last Tuesday, Murtha told Marine Lt. Gen. George Flynn, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, that he’d support giving the EFV “a little more research money this year” if the general gives the committee quarterly reports on the program.
Flynn said the EFV’s performance will be closely monitored. He noted that after the vehicle effort was recertified in 2007, five “knowledge points” were created with “off- ramps,” in case it does not perform as desired.
“It just passed its first knowledge point, and it is being monitored very closely,” Flynn said. The EFV performed better than the requirement, he said, achieving 61 hours between failures, up from the goal of 43.5 hours.
The general added EFV components are undergoing heat-vibration testing to ensure “when we put the prototypes together that we’re not going to be surprised by any issues with components.”
Flynn also told the HAC-D the armor appliqu� is needed to provide the underbelly protection desired without adding too much weight to the EFV. He said the amphibious vehicle is not designed to perform a role like the underbelly-explosion-deflecting MRAP would, and noted the EFV’s mobility provides protection.
Taylor told reporters last Wednesday he is not backing down from opposing the appliqu� arrangement the Marine Corps derived last year.
“I don’t know how I can be any clearer,” Taylor said. “I would like to help the Marines get the vehicle, but I cannot in good faith, as both a dad and a congressman, build something that I know from day one is vulnerable to an underbody attack.”
Marine Corps officials have argued EFVs, as they plan to use them, will not be vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) when the vehicles arrive on shore. Still, Taylor noted the increased use of IEDs, and that a significant number of theater casualties result from explosions below vehicles.
The EFV is intended to quickly carry 17 combat-equipped Marines inland from ships more than 20 miles offshore. Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway has dubbed it the service’s top acquisition priority.
EFV is among the efforts pundits have speculated may be targeted when the Pentagon seeks to cancel defense programs because of the economic crisis.
Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, head of Marine Corps Systems Command, recently argued that the forcible entry capability provided by EFV was needed and that canceling it would only save a “relatively small” amount of money (Defense Daily, March 2).