The Marine Corps will look to make as few changes as possible to the existing designs for the four Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) competitors in the hopes of getting the vehicles into the fleet as quickly as possible, Brig. Gen. William Mullen, director of the Marine Corps’ Capabilities Development Directorate, said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Other service and Pentagon officials have said that some changes will need to be made–definitely adding Marine Corps-specific communications equipment, possibly adding more seats to the passenger area–but Mullen made clear he wants to save the bulk of the changes for an engineering change proposal that would lead to ACV Increment 1.2.

BAE MPC ACV
BAE Systems’ entry for the now-canceled Marine Personnel Carrier is now among the vehicles being considered for the revamped Amphibious Combat Vehicle program.

“I’ve been counseled that using the words ‘off the shelf’ isn’t necessarily accurate by our systems command folks, they  call it non-developmental–which means, to my mind is, we have to keep control of the requirements of those vehicles, not let them go anywhere, in order to get that first group of vehicles out there,” he said.

All he wants out of Increment 1.1 is “good enough to operate,” not “100 percent of our requirement.”

That said, the four competitors all have quite a bit of survivability and capability built into them. Mullen said the contractors’ vehicles are based on the Marines’ test vehicle, which has four wheels that all pull to get over rough terrain; adjustable ground clearance, a V-shaped hull and suspended passenger seats for better blast protection; independent suspension so the vehicle can drive away if one tire is blown out; and better reliability and fuel consumption than the tracked vehicle originally envisioned as the ACV.

Mullen said he still hopes that the Marine Corps will get to an Increment 1.3 that can include high water speed, rather than relying on high speed connectors to get from ship to shore.

“What we’d really like to see is something to change technology-wise that enables us to have that high water speed vehicle that can get ashore and fight so we don’t have the tradeoffs” found in the earlier tracked ACV design – namely, less force protection, lower reliability and much higher cost.

For now, the ACV will move ashore via connectors. Based on measurements from the contractors, Mullen said he thinks two could fit on a Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), four on a Landing Craft Utility (LCU) and 20 or 21 on a Joint High Speed Vessel.