When the Marine Corps decided to buy a series of increasingly capable amphibious combat vehicles (ACV) it planned on earlier versions being optimized for ground combat ashore with the understanding that cost could be shaved by dialing down appetites for performance through the water.

“The objective is for the ACV to have a swim capability of about 12 miles,” Manny Pacheco, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Land Systems program office, told Defense Daily in an email.  “ACV1.1 does NOT have a ship to objective requirement – just a limited swim requirement – which we are confident will be robust. ACV 1.2 will build on that requirement and will be the one with a ship to shore/objective requirement.”

Marines with 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, and 4th AABn., conduct an amphibious raid at Camp Pendleton, Calif., July 25. The battalions worked with 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, to conduct several beach raids, convoys and night runs during the training.
Marines with 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, and 4th AABn., conduct an amphibious raid at Camp Pendleton, Calif., July 25. The battalions worked with 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, to conduct several beach raids, convoys and night runs during the training.

A recent small-business solicitation seeking an autonomous sled that can ferry the ACV 1.1 from beyond 12 miles from shore is less a problem with the ACV 1.1 than a deliberate part of the Marine Corps’ future reliance on connectors. Future amphibious landings likely will be contested by adversaries with precision munitions that will hold ships far offshore, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“As the threat from long-range precision weapons continues to evolve, standoff distances for naval vessels participating in amphibious operations could be as much as 100 nautical miles from shore,” CRS said in a report on ACV published in March. “At these distances, ship-to-shore connectors take on a much more prominent role in amphibious operations and ACVs will no longer need to be as capable in the water, as they are expected to traverse shorter distances to shore.”

The Marines’ initial 2011 Request for Information (RFI) for ACV included a requirement to self-deploy from amphibious ships carrying an infantry squad of 17 Marines from at least 12 miles offshore. An RFI for the Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) from the same year required that vehicle to carry nine infantry Marines and two crew and have only a “robust tactical swim capability (shore-to-shore (not designed to embark from an amphibious ship)).”

Once the Marine Corps took a look at non-developmental MPC offerings, it decided that the vehicles were sufficiently advanced to outperform its MPC requirements. Both BAE Systems and Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC] – the companies under $100 million-plus contracts for 16 engineering and manufacturing development vehicles – have demonstrated their vehicles’ ability to launch and recover from amphibious ships in moderate seas, for instance.

Vehicles from both competitors are delivering on time, on budget and with such impressive capabilities that John Gardner, the Marine Corps program manager for advanced amphibious assault, said in December that the prototypes would likely cover requirements for that program and the follow-on ACV 1.2.

It then revamped its ACV strategy into a phased approach and invited industry to submit incrementally capable ACVs beginning with version 1.1 that would be wheeled instead of tracked and have a swim capability of at least 3 nautical miles from shore. Marines envision that the successor to ACV 1.1—the ACV 1.2—will have a threshold requirement of 12 miles from ship-to-shore.

A recent small business innovation research solicitation, among many other technologies, calls for ideas for building an autonomous sled to move ACVs – even more advanced versions – from a ship to a contested shore.

“With the Marine Corps acquisition of the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) 1.1, there is a need to move the vehicles from ship to shore at higher speeds and greater ranges than can be provided by the vehicle itself,” the solicitation reads. “The goal is to develop a low cost detachable vehicle augmentation system, referred to as a sled, to provide the ACV with improved range and speed as it moves from ship to shore.”

The document notes that the ACV 1.1has limited mobility in open water, though the Marine Corps desires such a capability. The entire ACV program is the result of the previous Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program being sunk under the weight and cost of its high water-speed requirement.

In the near term, ACVs could be carried on a connector such as a Landing Craft Air Cushion or Landing Craft Utility, but those are expensive platforms that burn lots of fuel, are limited in quantity and are vulnerable to precision munitions in a contested environment.

“An autonomous sled may provide a low-cost solution to provide maneuver options for an ACV,” the Navy solicitation says.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is interested in platforms to provide extended range and increased water speed for vehicles while minimizing the space taken up aboard ship. This may include modular, transformable, or inflatable structures that can be stored and/or stacked at reduced footprints in other spaces aboard amphibious ships or other platforms that do not have a well deck. The initial concept is for the sled to travel 130 nautical miles round-trip at speeds of over 25 knots loaded with an ACV.

“The sled … is part of the continuing effort to field a high water-speed, long-distance capability to keep the fleet further out to sea,” Pacheco said. The sled would “provide the ability to respond to an ever-increasing threat of missile attack by rogue states/actors. ACV 2.0 as has been described before is a concept (not necessarily a vehicle) to have that long range, high-water speed capability. This is an ONR effort to study what’s in the realm of possible.”