Sometimes You Write Long Enough to See Realism Emerge

The Marines seem to accept that two cheaper vehicles to carry out movement to shore and movement inland is superior to trying to build one very expensive vehicle to do both.

I've been meaning to comment on the Marine Corps abandonment of the advanced Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) and the decision to build a wheeled armored personnel carrier (MPC) for work inland:

The marines now have two replacement vehicle projects going. The MPC (Marine Personnel Carrier) is a $4.5 million wheeled, amphibious armored vehicle. This would be similar to the Stryker but a bit larger and modified for amphibious operations. This project is proceeding because it is low-risk (in the technology department) and the marines need some kind of armored vehicle to replace AAV7s that are dying of old age. The $12 million ACV is the EFV without most of the expensive stuff that didn't work. In effect, the ACV will be a 21st century version of the AAV7, optimized to pass all its development tests and get into service as quickly as possible. The marines do not want to be reminded of the EFV.

The EFV was designed to allow Marines to get ashore fast from farther away from the shore to protect the Navy ships that carry them from shore-based precision weapons and to get through the kill zone of other precision weapons targeting the Marine amphibious carriers moving Marines ashore.

Once ashore, the EFV was supposed to function as an infantry fighting vehicle since the last decades of war have seen Marines used as co-Army forces in non-amphibious warfare.

But in the inland role, the old AAV vehicle was and the new EFV would have been too vulnerable.

And I had my doubts that a shore-based threat too great to allow the big amphibs to get closer to shore would be low enough for EFVs to cross and safely reach the shore without heavy attrition.

Good idea in theory, but it was too costly even if my operational objections could be resolved.

I figured two vehicles were the solution to the competing needs of the Marines to be amphibious and the Army's most significant "allied" ground contingent in our land wars since World War II ended.

I've argued this 2-vehicle solution for 11 years, actually--and the mission focus (see page 38) to justify such "inland" vehicles for longer than this blog has been around.

It's nice to see that realism can emerge when all other solutions are exhausted. And nice to see that a blogger so far inland could grasp that reality early on.