Concise. Clearly written. No by products. Read the whole thing here.
At the very least, Mabus needs to have a convincing explanation of why killing EFV won't put the lives of thousands of Marines at risk. The Department of the Navy has embraced "forcible entry" as the defining mission of the Marine Corps, which means storming enemy beaches under heavy fire. It also acknowledges that forcible entry requires an "amphibious tractor" like EFV that can maneuver warfighters from ship to shore and then quickly transition to land operations upon hitting the beach. Having made those two concessions, it has put itself in a box in explaining how to fashion a credible force structure in the absence of EFV. Even if EFV didn't have three times the water speed and twice the armor of the existing amphibious vessel -- which it does -- the simple reality is that the existing vehicle was developed in the 1970s, and littoral regions have become more dangerous since then.
