Sidenote. Is anyone satisfied with the new Marine Corps plan to finally down select to two MPC candidates next year and then pick a winner in 2019...with production to start sometime in the 2020's?
Doesn't the idea of making the Stryker amphibious sound better and better? Beg borrow and steal them from Army stock, get them to help fund mods to make existing vehicles swim (the Army could possibly benefit from that too) and be done with this whole sad affair! The one vehicle that is MARINE CORPS SPECIFIC is the one VEHICLE that the Marine Corps habitually fails to get right. Amazing!
Stryker will barely meet the standard's even with the modification. Patria AMV has a lot more growth to it because of the newer more advanced design. Stryker was just an interm vehicle when the Army bought it to supplement the ageing M-113. I would upgrade lav-25 and wait for the better vehicle than settle for less.
ReplyDeletethe Stryker and the Patria AMV are really similar vehicles. quite honestly if we're talking about growth potential AND real deal designed amphibious vehicles then only the General Dynamics and BAE offerings are suitable. the Patria and the Terrex are both land based systems that have been modified to meet USMC needs.
DeleteDepends on which model. The original Stryker was very light. The MPC candidates were all almost twice their weight (slightly less). Some situations that the newer MPCs can handle, the older Strykers really should not get close, e.g BTR low calibre guns.
DeleteNot to mention taking a page from the British, their Viking ATTC was light as well, but once "theatre specific" kit got added, they went overweight and their frames became too stressed really fast, hence the "Warthog" ATTC. If your vehicle is heavy in the first place, add on kits become a smaller fraction of the weight increase, so the stress is less.
On the other hand, the newer Strykers seem to have been put on steroids. Depending on what they tweaked with the design, it might work.
And production in 2020 is bull. They can have it all sorted in 2017-18 maximum, considering that they have been testing the damn things since 2014 and the production lines are already rolling out vehicles.
If all else fails, Strykers would be better than nothing. Canning the F-35 and using the funds to fully fund production of a vehicle picked next year as well as a restarted and re-vamped EFV would be even better. Despite how radically different those ideas are, they both have the same amount of "impossibility" attached.
ReplyDeleteI really hope there is some stuff in the works way way behind the scenes because this is just stupid. The post that you made a few days ago about the land vehicle procurement plan was asinine to the point that one hopes it was satirical. (But, even worse, it wasn't)
All of that being said. Making the Stryker swim is a terrible idea. Here's why:
1) As Owl said, it would be deficient in armor against most (if not all) Russian cannons and really only armored against 12.7mm.
2) You would be getting FLAT BOTTOM hulls which means you would get IED protection that is better than a HMMWV and worse than pretty much every other vehicle made after 2007.
3) In the rare case that you got a whole vehicle, it would be beaten and worn to the point that it would be a liability.
4) They would have almost NO GROWTH POTENTIAL because they would lack all of the interim upgrades applied to the Stryker fleet before the current upgrade plan was initiated AND they would lack the first set of upgrades applied to the fleet under this plan (DVH Stryker Plan).
Either way, you are getting a bad deal.
I'm not sure about the EFV though, it's a bit too ambitious for my tastes. I rather a conventional LCU/armour combo unit than to get one vehicle to rule them all. A speed boosted LCU, some waterproofing just in case your boat gets sunk just before the shoreline, problem mostly solved. Or you can do the current AAV rush, but with MPCs, and it'll still be an improvement.
DeleteMy favourite is the LST unload. Armed properly, it can cover your landing and deployment and act as a command center and unloading from it is much much faster than relying on LCUs and LCACs. And in case shit happens, as it often does, all you have to do in a retreat is drive up/run up the ramp, not wait for the heli-vac or LCU. It can even cover you while you're bugging out!
The major problem with the EFV is hydroplanning. For some reason, people were stuck on getting four times the water speed of the AAV7 with the EFV, planning does that, but adds LOTS of cost, weight, and maintenance. The base EFV WITHOUT planning is still 2-2.5 times as fast as the AAV7, while carrying a full squad and with "MRAP level protection" (or so they say).
DeleteI think if anyone were serious about force projection and protection, they would look at a non-planning EFV. Besides the cost, maintenance, and time savings that it would get you, you could look into adding some type of shallow v-hull to it, or at the least, a v-shaped add on kit because non-planning means that you are not stuck with a flat bottom.
(I will always be skeptical of flat bottoms, though you can make a flat bottom vehicle protected against IED's, it forces you to add lots of weight that is otherwise unneeded.)
The only other problem that I have with the EFV is the tiny door in the back, I have to imagine that you can make that door bigger and make it a tiny ramp.
As you said though, the even the MPC is far better than the AAV. Though the MPC is in no way a replacement for the AAV7 (size wise), it matches the AAV in almost every category, with the exception of those like protection, where the MPC outright beats the AAV by miles.
However, none of this matters until someone can break the "Equipment isn't worth buying unless we can get everything we want in a perfect world." mentality that rules the DoD. This thinking is why the JLTV has taken 10 years to get to EMD, the F-35 debacle has went as far as it has, there has been no significant movement on the EFV replacement, and why a bunch of other programs are over projected budgets and past due on time.
Does anyone have any information as to the fielding plan for the MPC? Was the Marine Corps planning on equipping their Amphibious Assault Battalions with both AAV-7s and MPCs? (and doing PMCS on both vehicles at the same time?) Obviously the MPC was never designed to deploy with the MEU, as deck space is already extremely limited and there's just no way that they'd be able to carry twice as many vehicles (even if the MPC is dimensionally smaller than the AAV-7). How was the MPC supposed to fit into Marine Corps TO&E? Were they going to have MPC "platoons" of 24 vehicles (enough to get equivalent lift with an AAV platoon of 12 vehicles)? That seems quite bloated, even if the increase in total number of Marines is small (2 crew in MPC vs. 3 crew in AAV-7). Additionally, I've heard reference time and time again in articles that the MPC is planned to replace the LAV-A2. I understand these two vehicles to have different roles (LAV-A2 = reconnaissance asset, MPC = armored personnel carrier). Is this a case of the media misunderstanding the use of the vehicle, or is the Marine Corps interested in going back to Light Armored Infantry Battalions? Buying enough MPCs just to lift one MEB means quite a lot of vehicles.
ReplyDeleteNick Messenger,
ReplyDeleteThe oldest Strykers in the inventory are still in use. All of the flat bottoms traded up in the DVH upgrade process are newer than the ones currently in use by a Stryker regiment not slated to get the DVH upgrades.
Please redo your analysis with this additional fact in mind.