By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps is moving forward with the once-troubled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) development program, with a key Pentagon meeting planned for next month followed by possible orders for revised prototypes.
“It’s a significant time in the program,” said Donald Kotchman, deputy, General Dynamics [GD] Amphibious Systems. The General Dynamics-developed EFV is an amphibious tracked vehicle intended to quickly transport Marines inland from ships far offshore.
The company is on track to finish a preliminary design review by the end of April, Kotchman told Defense Daily yesterday in an interview. The EFV effort then is slated to be weighed by Pentagon acquisition executive John Young during a Defense Acquisition Board meeting May 23. If all goes well, General Dynamics will receive a follow-on contract and be given the green light to build seven more prototypes and modify existing prototypes.
A crucial time period will come in November, Kotchman said, when a critical design review, an evolution of the preliminary design review, is expected. Actual fabrication of the prototypes could start after a critical design review.
The 12-year-old EFV effort has suffered setbacks–including prototypes found to be unreliable during testing in 2006 and a cost breach unveiled last year. The program, which was restructured last year, is now slated to reach initial operational capability in 2015.
Questions about the EFV’s design linger in Congress, though.
Reps. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) are slated to be briefed by the Marine Corps April 24 on possible design changes for increasing the EFV’s underbelly- blast protection on land. They will probably not like what they hear–because the service is sticking with a recommendation to add removable armor that the congressmen have panned.
Taylor and Bartlett, the chairman and ranking member on the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee, last summer pushed for an EFV redesign to make the amphibious vehicle more durable against blasts from improvised explosive devices, specifically calling for a V-shaped hull like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle has.
Service officials told them late last year that the V-hull is not feasible and an alternate option is a removable armor appliqu�, a concept both lawmakers critiqued. They said, among other things, stopping the vehicle once it goes from water to shore to add the removable armor doesn’t make sense in battle.
The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) conducted its own review of redesign options for the high-tech land-to-water vehicle, and concurs with the Marine Corps’ armor add-on proposal, service spokesman David Branham said via e-mail.
The “Marine Corps views the independent analysis accomplished by CNA [as] supporting [the] mine blast protection study[‘s] recommended approach for sustained land operations ashore to use [an] upgrade kit for additional underbelly protection against IEDs as the right solution for increasing survivability,” said Branham, a spokesman for the program executive office for Marine Corps Land Systems.
He noted the Marine Corps analysis found giving the EFV an angled bottom would “negate” the vehicle’s ability to travel fast over water and carry 18 combat-equipped Marines.
Taylor yesterday said his concerns about the EFV design remain.
“We could certainly do our part to stop the plans,” Taylor said about himself and Bartlett, adding at the end of the day the full House Armed Services Committee will do what it believes is best.
“I just can’t imagine a scenario where they’re going to allow a pause in fighting to send a Marine out to add that armor,” Taylor said. “It just doesn’t make sense in my book and they have failed to convince me this is the best they can do…I feel very strongly about this.”
An official from Marine Corps Combat Development Command will conduct the briefing with the congressmen, Branham said.