Blast from the recent past. General Dynamics ACV contender.

General Dynamics ACV prototype.

I was doing my morning sweep thru the internet and tried to find the latest and greatest on the ACV contest.

All I could find is a rehashed story from National Defense that once again promises that the ACV contest is about to heat up after Request for Proposal are received after Feb.

We talked about sequestration and the F-35.  I think the same can be applied to the Marine Personnel Carrier program.

The point though is that of all the competitors, the General Dynamics version has been the most elusive...until Defense Daily published the above pic.  More info here and here.

While reading the comments from my previous blog post, something I said earlier still haunts....

so what you're telling me is that our new ACV is now barely more capable than the AAV in the water, probably less mobile than a legacy AAV over broken terrain but the plus side is that its more heavily protected?
do you get what you're saying?
we canned a high speed EFV that was (according to HQMC) only suffering from reliability problems...they said that it had attained MRAP type levels of protection before it was canceled. we declined to buy a non-planning version of that same vehicle because we said that high speed in the water was important. we not only threw away all the work that was done on the EFV but then we turned around, wasted 4 years debating this issue and in the end we're going to rely on a vehicle, the Marine Personnel Carrier that was intended from the start to be a surrogate vehicle to the EFV.
we invest over 15 years of work...waste millions of dollars and in the end we're getting a vehicle that only equals (at best) what we have now?
sorry. i want to be fired up, but this just makes me want to choke someone in leadership. don't piss on my back and tell me its sunshine. additionally lets be real. we'll actually be lucky to have these vehicles in service by 2025. so again. tell me why i should be happy?

One thing the USMC must NOT do is fool itself.

Its currently operating an obsolete Amphibious Assault Vehicle and the ACV 1.1 will at best MATCH, not exceed the combat capabilities of threat vehicles...especially Chinese and Russian IFV/APCs.

We're playing catch up and if more delays occur then we might be in the uncomfortable position of having to retain the AAV (or give it up entirely because its so old and having our boys ride into combat in that other threatened program, the JLTV) until possibly 2040 or later.

I want to be optimistic but I just can't.  Not after so much failure.