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.
Besides beach assaults, the EFVs flexibility allows other options like turning non-amphib ramped civilian ships into (over the horizon) amphibious platforms.
ReplyDeleteEFV is a must have, period.
But so is LCAC and it's next generation version. There are voices that say that LCACs are the future, especially since a lot of other USMC vehicles won't be able to keep up with EFV during the beach crossing, yet are still an integral part of the (beach) assault, such as assault breachers, M-1s, HIMARS, MRAPs etc.
It's going to be a close call, and that's not even counting the political and inter-service rivalry that will inevitably enter the arena.
Kill it with fire. Marines love the capabilities that the EFV offers on paper, Its execution as hardware is a real letdown. Two decades of development and billions spent on the EFV, has created hardware that only operates 4.5 hours before a mission critical breakdown(according to the GAO report)
ReplyDeleteTechnology has changed considerably as well as the threats, since the EFV was conceived.
As much as the certain marines want to keep the EFV, The AAV will be the backbone of the Marines as long as the EFV remains so expensive and unreliable.
Kill the EFV, and approach industry to come up with hardware meeting similar requirements as the EFV, but make it affordable and reliable to outright replace the AAV
P.S. Loren Thompson is on DefenseNewsTV again next Sunday Oct 3rd :)
ReplyDelete