The Marines still want a vehicle to replace the AAV, but would like it to be cheaper. But the capabilities the Marines want ensure that a similar vehicle will have a similar price tag:
It enables the seamless projection of ready-to-fight Marine rifle squads from sea to land. It is thus the key to allowing ship-to-shore operations in permissive, uncertain, and hostile environments; assuring access where infrastructure is destroyed or nonexistent; and creating joint access in defended areas. It is also central to the entire Marine tactical vehicle strategy for operations ashore. Once on land, an amphibious armored fighting vehicle provides the Marine rifle squad with the protected mobility and firepower to maneuver to a position of advantage to rapidly close with, engage, and defeat the enemy.
This is all based on two notions that have been combined. One, modern shore defense systems pose too much of a threat to Navy ships for the Navy to drop anchor offshore to send the Marines ashore. Since the Navy needs to remain over the horizon, the notional EFV needs to be able to travel a long distance at a relatively good speed from that ship to the shore.
The second notion is that the AAV was not the best armored vehicle for the Marines' "march up" from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003. It is big, poorly armored, and not designed for mechanized warfare. It is one RPG, anti-tank missile, or tank round from being a catastrophic kill with lots of dead Marine passengers.
Oh, and after the roadside bomb experience in Iraq, the Marines would like it to have MRAP characteristics. So make it three notions and good luck with grafting a mine-resistant V-shaped hull onto a flat-bottomed, sea-going vehicle.
The problem, as I've long thought (it was one of my early posts on my original site back in 2003, just after we'd smashed Saddam's military) is that "seamless" part. As long as the Marines insist on having one vehicle to carry Marines from the ship over the horizon to an objective quite a distance inland in one bound, no new design is going to be cheaper than the cancelled EFV.
And while both missions--safely landing and moving inland--are necessary, why the "seamless" part? Did Marines land south of Basra in March 2003, and then immediately drive north? No. I just don't see any scenario where the Marines would need to land and then immediately drive inland. Indeed, if the Marines succeed in refocusing on amphibious warfare to avoid the types of campaigns they've fought inland this last decade, the Marines won't need that large, swimming, Bradley equivalent to fight deep inland at all.
The Marines should focus on a designing new vehicle to get their riflemen ashore and secure a bridgehead for their amphibious mission. Some heavier M-1s can be carried ashore, remember, on landing craft, to support this mission. And if the Marines need to fight inland in large numbers, assume they will have the time to ship in new vehicles--whether MRAPs or Bradleys, or some other newly designed vehicle (perhaps using the Army's planned new infantry fighting vehicle).
