Fancy That

The extremely expensive Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle was a vehicle sold on its ability to carry Marines from amphibious warships over the horizon (where the ships needed to stay to avoid shore-based missiles) to reach shore quickly and then be capable of functioning as an armored fighting vehicle to fight inland. It was cancelled because it was just too expensive. The Marines will seek alternatives to the cancelled EFV.

So lo and behold, the Navy and Marines have decided that they really can allow amphibious warships to approach to within 12 miles of the shore (from my Jane's email updates):

The US Navy (USN) and the US Marine Corps (USMC) have revised the minimum stand-off distance from a contested shore for amphibious operations from a minimum of 25 n miles to 12. The change is due to improvements in the USN's mine countermeasure (MCM) capability and early success of the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye carrier-based information, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead said on 2 March [2011.]

Entirely coincidental, I'm sure. I'm just not sure whether there was never a need to stay over the horizon or whether this change is to avoid having someone say that the Navy can't support a Marine amphibious mission against opposition without the EFV, so why bother funding such a capability?

I suppose it is always possible that the stated reasons for moving the safe stand-off range closer to shore are true.