USMC experimenting with Squad configuration. They're wrecking the ACV plan before its even selected!

Thanks to Joe for the link!

via Janes.

The US Marine Corps (USMC) is experimenting with new structures and equipment sets for infantry squads and will trial various designs with an operational unit over the coming year.
"We're going to be redesigning the squad make up down at the lowest level to see what the squad should look like as we experiment," Lieutenant General Robert Walsh, head of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told reporters during a 30 August breakfast meeting.
Squads in 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, will be reconfigured in a variety organisational constructs that include "different sizes, different make up, different fire team make up", and more, he explained.

Anyone want to place a bet that the Squad will go smaller?  Do you really believe that they will roll out a 9 man squad?

The point is stark.

If the Marine Corps jacks around with the size of the Squad...if it grows to 15 or even 20 Marines then you can basically throw out the ACV.

Why?

Because the ACV was built around the 13 man squad.  If the Squad grows then the number of vehicles required grows.  Additionally you're not only adding Marines but equipment.  We don't know what the "futurists" are thinking but I keep hearing about UAVs and Cyber at the Squad level.

That's gonna increase the amount of gear carried.  Which means that the Marine Corps is making the ACV obsolete before it even enters service.

So what is the game?

I have no idea.  My thinking is that the Survivability Upgrade for the AAV made no sense if the ACV was ACTUALLY a priority program for the Marine Corps (why waste the money?).  If you make the Squad larger then all of a sudden the ACV is no longer viable and the AAV gets pushed toward that 60 plus years of service.  The excuse will be that Squad integrity is important, that the ACV doesn't meet that need due to the changing battlefield and they get to upgrade more AAVs on the cheap while they lavishly buy every toy under the sun for the Wing.

Marine Corps Ground Component Officers need to sack the fuck up.  Neller is obviously ball-less, Dunford quit before he even had the job long enough to put up his "I love me" wall and the stench of Amos lingers because his little buddy Davis still has a job after his continued fuck ups (how hasn't he been fired after the crashes, the poor availability rate of the F-18s and the CH-53s falling apart?).

The Marine Corps needs an Alfred Grey for the 21st Century...a reformer to return it to its warrior roots.

"Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary".