The ARV will be highly mobile, networked, transportable, protected and lethal. The capability will provide, sensors, communication systems and lethality options to overmatch threats that have historically been addressed with more heavily armored systems.
That would be effing fantastic!
But can we get it? Being highly mobile and transportable while also being protected and lethal is certainly the Holy Grail of armored vehicles.
But as I argued in Military Review (pp. 28-35) when the Army wanted the Future Combat System (FCS) replacement for the Abrams and Bradley to be strategically mobile, lethal, and well protected:
The Army should not spend whatever it takes attempting to meld multiple revolutionary technologies into one vehicle for all missions. The FCS should be different from the Abrams and Bradley but must be designed with near-term technology that incorporates modular improvements if the Army is to turn “gee whiz” ideas into actual hardware. Separated missiles and a sensor grid; active defenses; EGTs; and exotic engines, fuels, and weapons can be retrofitted to defeat more capable enemies. Barring successfully fielding exotic technologies to make the FCS work, the Army must consider how it will defeat future heavy systems if fighting actual enemies and not merely suppressing disorder becomes its mission once again. The tentative assumptions of 2001 will change by 2025. When they do, the Army will rue its failure today to accept that the wonder tank will not be built.
In practice, recon vehicles must be heavy if the opponent is a tank-based modern army. "Agile" recon vehicles just sit there in a spreading slag of their own too-light armor melting around the dead crew. That's not agile in practice.
The Marines cannot build the wonder ARV. Ask the Army.
