ACV and MPC are just wishful thinking.

via National Defense Magazine.

The same goes for a portion of the existing fleet of Amphibious Assault Vehicles, said Manny Pacheco, spokesman for the Marine Corps’ Advanced Amphibious Assault program office. Of the 1,000 amphibious tracked vehicles in the service’s fleet, just under 400 will be reset, he said. It will be another in a laundry list of overhauls and upgrades the 40-year-old vehicles have been through since they came into service in 1972.

“We have to find a way to bridge that capability, to make some of these vehicles last, at least until the ACV starts to come online,” Pacheco told National Defense.

The tracked ship-to-shore fighting vehicles will have to pull their weight at least until 2030, when the ACV is scheduled to enter the fleet. Automotive upgrades should be in development and testing until 2014, with reset AAVs returning to active duty between 2015 and 2017, Pacheco said.

Resetting the AAVs will involve upgrading their armor, installation of blast-mitigating seats and adding beefed-up suspension systems.

AAVs that do not undergo reset and overhaul will eventually be replaced by Amphibious Combat Vehicles, the now-defunct  Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program under a different name. When that program was voluntarily shuttered in January 2011, Marine Corps engineers went immediately to work “redefining and refining” the service’s requirements, Pacheco said.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The JLTV doesn't make sense for the Marine Corps and they haven't given a compelling reason for why its better than simply upgrading/retrofitting existing Humvees.

But that isn't the real kicker.  Read the whole article but I recommend you have a bottle of your favorite adult beverage within arms reach when you do.  Either that or go see the local drug dealer and have him sell you something powerful.  Cause you'd have to be drunk or smoking crack to believe what they're trying to sell.

The current AAV will have to soldier on till 2030.

That means that the basic design of the Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Vehicle will be almost 70 years old before it BEGINS to be replaced.

Over the course of (lets be generous) 5 years, the production run of the ACV will be completed and we can begin buying Marine Personnel Carriers.  That means that the MPC will come online in 2035.

We're all being fed bullshit and we don't have defense reporters that are smart enough to realize exactly how crazy that timeline is.

You're talking about a longer development cycle for the ACV than you had for the EFV!

Let me give you the real news here.  The MPC is just a dream.  It won't make it to service. A 2030 timeframe for it to enter production?  Planning that far out never comes to fruition.  We don't even need to talk about that vehicle anymore.  ACV?  Ditto.  They can run numbers and do all the busy work but real is real.  If you're talking about it hitting the fleet in 2030 then you might as well believe in the tooth fairy.

We really only have two legit vehicle programs.  JLTV and the AAV upgrade.  Remember.  You heard it here first.