After the EFV
Synchronized approach will drive new vehicle acquisition programs
By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent
From Ship to Shore
gram and to maximize value by use
of an integrated acquisition portfolio approach.
“This approach will have three
synchronized efforts: Acceleration
of the procurement of Marine
Personnel Carriers, investment in a
service life extension program and
upgrades for a portion of the exist-
ing amphibious assault vehicles,
development of a new amphibious
combat vehicle.”
Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn, the
deputy commandant for combat
development, said he was working
the ACV program “pretty hard”
Producing even a prototype ACV in anywhere near
that time would be virtually unprecedented, particular-
ly in light of the EFV’s troubled 22-year development.
Amos cited the short time it took to get the Mine
Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles produced and shipped to Iraq in response to the deadly
improvised explosive devices as a possible model for
the ACV development. The MRAPs, however, were
slightly modified versions of vehicles that had been in
production for years.
To carry out the synchronized approach on the three
vehicles, the Marines created a single program office,
which Flynn called “a war room.” That brought together not just the program officials for all three projects,
but also the people responsible for setting requirements
and the engineers and analysts who can evaluate what
those goals would mean in time and money.
That would allow them to consider “benefits and
tradeoffs at the beginning” of the process, Flynn said
during a June 9 appearance at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington.
The Marines are using Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle prototypes
in tests to help inform an analysis of alternatives for the
Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) program.
■ The test vehicles are put into different configurations to replicate
possible conditions of an ACV to provide data on land range and
water speed at various weights and forms.
■ ACV-focused tests were built around the concept that the amphibious assault would be launched from 12 to 18 nautical miles offshore.
■ The aim is to have an ACV that would cost between $4 million
and $12 million per unit and be operational in this decade.
The Marine Corps’ long-cherished Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program may be dead, but the prototype vehicles are continuing to
serve as valuable test beds for the capabilities and technologies the service might want in the EFV’s planned
replacement, the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV).
The use of the now-expendable EFVs is part of what
is intended to be a greatly shortened drive to develop,
test and field the ACV as an affordable successor to the
Vietnam-vintage AAV- 7 amphibious assault vehicles,
or amtracs. The extended use of the EFVs also is
expected to minimize, and perhaps eliminate, the payment of millions of dollars in contract-termination
penalties to their manufacturer, General Dynamics
Land Systems, Sterling Heights, Mich.
And the ACV development is part of an unusual
unified operation that is intended to save time and
money in pursuing three of the Corps’ high-priority
ground combat vehicle programs.
In his 2011 “posture statement” to the congressional defense committees this spring, Gen. James F. Amos,
the Marine Corps commandant, said the service plans
to “mitigate risks associated with a new vehicle pro-
