"I personally met with top leadership within the F35 program, to include our industry partner, and communicated that I intend to personally track the progress of our airplane over the next two years. I will track every pound of weight growth, required engineering fixes, and every test point completed.....General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps.The above quote is an indication of the seriousness that the Commandant placed on getting the F-35 in service. Looks like it paid off because the airplane has an IOC date and the program appears unstoppable. (passage below is via DoD Buzz)
“Cost is a factor in this,” Amos said.“If things go according to current plans, a request for proposal should go out to industry early next year.”In 2011 the Marines cancelled its Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program due to increased cost for the capability. The EFV was designed to transit from an amphibious assault ship over a distance of 25 nautical miles. The over-the-horizon transit capability was considered essential to the Navy and the Marine Corps during the EFV development to protect from the threat of low-cost guided weapon systems.“I want [the ACV] to be like an F-150 [a large Ford pickup truck], reliable and beefy. …They are utility fighting vehicles for us,” Amos said.“I am only going to get one more shot to get this right.”Amos again. This time he's talking about the ACV and declaring that cost is a factor! A battalion worth of ACVs could be bought with the money spent on two or three F-35s and cost is a factor? (passage below is via Defense Tech)
“There are two answers to that, one is as Commandant of the Marine Corps’s answer which is Before I leave leave office four years from now … we’ll have a program of record, we’ll have steel, there will be a vehicle and I’ll be able to drive it,” Amos said responding to lawmakers questions during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. “I’m trying to pressurize industry, I’m trying to pressurize the acquisition folks, I want the word to get out. If we followed the standard acquisition timeline, which in some cases got us to where we are today, it’ll be 2024.”To avoid such a fate, the general said the Department of the Navy will be using a model similar to the one it used to quickly buy and field thousands of MRAPs during the height of the Iraq war.“Something probably that resembles the sense of urgency that we had for the MRAP but probably a little bit more scheduled, and that’s what we’re going to do.”Amos is gone next year. Hopefully we'll get a grunt Commandant to sort the armor mess out. But it must be noted that the sense of urgency that was found for the F-35 is clearly lacking with a Marine Corps unique, mission specific, personnel carrier/infantry fighting vehicle for Marines.
Clearly something is broken in Marine land for this amount of vacillation to be going on without comment from members of the Infantry, and AAV community. You lose one F-35 in combat and you lose a pilot and an airframe. You lose an upgraded AAV to an enemy IED and you lose a squad.
Considering potential body counts which platform do you think deserves priority replacement?
Defense Industry Daily said it best when they said this..." another episode of ballooning costs and delays will cripple the Marines for a generation"...I think we should consider the Marine Corps on crutches.
NOTE: Amos said.....
"I’m trying to pressurize industry, I’m trying to pressurize the acquisition folks, I want the word to get out. If we followed the standard acquisition timeline, which in some cases got us to where we are today, it’ll be 2024.”
Planned IOC for the ACV is now past 2020.
What made MRAP procurement successful was first congress was completely on board. Two all the Key Performance Parameters were set to what the vehicles had already demonstrated.
ReplyDeleteWhat this meant was inviting the manufacturers to bring their production ready vehicles to various test facilities evaluate them against each other then buy the best one. There was very little research and design money spent on these vehicles by the DOD.
We cannot buy the ACV this way because no one except General Dynamics, with the legacy EFV platform, has anything close to production ready. I do not see BAE or Lockheed Martin spending their own money to develop this vehicle. We would have to issue EMD contracts that would slow the process by years.
Of course there is the MPC where every vehicle entered already is in production for another military...
and your last sentence is the operative one (the rest of it was informative)...the MPC is already in production and we could get that on an accelerated timetable. that's where we should go and do ACV work at the leisurely pace that its currently following.
DeleteIf MPC is procured first it's a fairly good bet there will be no ACV. MPC was created because EFV was seen as too expensive. If ACV isn't too expensive what is the rationale for MPC?
ReplyDeleteDoes MPC swim well enough that it can replace the AAV? Has the Corps accessed the cost impact in needing twice as many infantry carriers vs the single more expensive ACV, as well as logistic, personnel, and other costs? How much thought has gone into how the squad operates when split between 2 vehicles? What other issues arise when operating twice as many vehicles? Exactly how does operating an APC (MPC) further impact all of this?
Consider a Marine platoon carried by 3 IFV's (ACV). The platoon commander has to deal with 3 vehicles that all provide very significant fire support. Same platoon commander mounted in MPC now has 6+ APC's with far more limited fire support that might require one or more additional fire support vehicles. Once we're discussing 6 to 8+ vehicles to transport and support a Marine platoon, vs 3 for ACV, then we've got entirely new sets of issues where one to one vehicle comparisons become misleading.
Moreover, the current AAV platoon supporting an infantry company normally has 12 vehicles and around 45 Marines. The platoon commander has a lot of responsibility and advises the company commander on AAV employment. What is the TO&E of an MPC unit assigned to an infantry company going to look like?
This is actually a significant issue. If 30 or so MPC's, and 100 or so Marines, are required to support an infantry company aren't we creating various issue? Consider 6 MPC's and 2 fire support vehicles. Isn't the infantry platoon commander at this point a bit overwhelmed in coordinating 8 AFV's along with his mounted or dismounted infantry platoon? Is this number of vehicles going to be a section commanded by an NCO or a platoon providing another lieutenant who might actually command the vehicles? Who's working for whom at this point?
This isn't to say it all can't be made to work with MPC in terms of doctrine and organization but rather to simply point out there are issues and that it's not entirely clear they have been worked through. An ACV section of 3 or 4 vehicles supporting an infantry platoon is in fact a different animal than a platoon of 6 to 8+, whether it's called a platoon or not.
good points and it goes back to the very theory of amphibious operations. the original LVT on up to the current AAV all were designed with one goal. to maximize the number of Marines to hit the beach as rapidly as possible but what happens once your forces are on land? that brings up the next issue. if one vehicle is lost then you begin to degrade a force with one felll swoop. which concept is the one to chase. faster buildup of forces in the first wave or increased vulnerability to losses with one successful enemy act?
Deletethe debate goes on.
The Ellis Group has already studied this matter and published their assessment in MC Amphibious Capabilities.
DeleteBoth sides have trade offs but overall I would choose a MPC type IFV. Squads can still work just fine with 8 or 9 Marines and that is actually the standard squad for almost all of Marine units in Afghanistan. Plenty of companies were split into 4 platoons with either 3 or 4 squads of 8 Marines per squad. They did this to gain increase maneuver.
Plus the bigger question is what would i rather have in 3 years? The battle tested Polish Rosamak derived vehicle or a AAV7 that has new radios and a night vision sight? The ACV is probably 7-8 years away at the earliest from becoming fully operational. We could have the first foreign built MPCs in the fleet in 1.5 years and follow that on with American built ones in another 2.5 if we really wanted to.
if the Program Office has studied this...if the Ellis Group has studied this then what's the problem? what haven't we gotten a decision from HQMC on this issue?
DeleteWith respect the Ellis group focused on various issues, especially initial build up comparisons by hour, but did not address most of the issues raised above. Moreover, the 77 page report dated 27 April 2012, not only did not get into IFV vs APC considerations but implies MPC and ACV have similar levels of firepower, which is false (see page S-20).
ReplyDeleteThe very important considerations in having to operate (as well as command, maintain, and support) twice as many AFV's to support the same number of Marines has not, to my knowledge, been properly considered.
While the Corps has experimented with various small infantry unit organizations it's not clear it wants to give up on the large infantry squad and it certainly shouldn't be pushed into doing so because a specific AFV carries 8 dismounts.
Another issue mentioned above is exactly who commands the 6 MPC carrying the infantry platoon plus 2+ fire support vehicles? Will this unit be organized as a section and commanded by an NCO or a platoon and in either case is a rifle platoon, with attachments, enough of a challenge for a lieutenant that we really need to add 8 AFV's and perhaps two dozen more Marines?