By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps official steering the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program said he is optimistic the long-delayed development effort with General Dynamics [GD] will emerge intact from a major Pentagon review, despite the defense secretary’s recent questioning of the need for the amphibious tank.
“We have the indicator (from the Pentagon) that as recently as two years ago–and not that much has changed in the world over that time–that the nation still had a vital need for a surface joint forcible entry capability,” Col. Keith Moore, the EFV program manager, said in an interview at his office in Woodbridge, Va.
“So I think they’ll go through that same analysis and I would guess that they’ll come up with the same conclusions.”
The developmental EFV, a tracked amphibious vehicle intended to quickly carry combat-equipped Marines inland from ships more than 20 miles offshore, successfully emerged from a Critical Design Review (CDR) late last year. General Dynamics is now working on a $767 million contract it received in July 2008 to build seven vehicle prototypes and modify existing vehicles that fared poorly during testing in 2006. The goal, Moore said, is for the program–which has faced cost and engineering challenges–to reach low-rate-initial production, or Milestone C, in late 2011.
While Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 did not include EFV in the programs he called for trimming or eliminating, he said the program will be scrutinized in the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which is just now starting. To EFV supporters’ chagrin, Gates then questioned during an April 17 Naval War College speech if the United States will again launch major amphibious actions requiring such a forcible-entry vehicle.
Moore said he believes the main EFV-related question before the QDR is “Does the country need an amphibious capability?”
“And (Gates) sort of answered that as, yeah, we need it; the big question is how much do you need,” Moore said.
The colonel noted the Marine Corps already in 2006 reduced the number of planned EFVs from 1,013 down to 573 vehicles. In doing this, he said the service “looked at what was changing in the world, the need for a wider variety of vehicles for a wider variety of missions, and so right-sized the amphibious capability.”
“The Marine Corps is sort of three years ahead of the QDR at looking at it and saying, ‘Absolutely, (the EFV is) still required, and has a national capability that’s required to implement national military strategy; but, maybe we are buying too much of it based upon all of the other thing that we need to be able to do; this is, though, the right size of what’s required based upon what’s going on in the real world,'” Moore said.
Moore also noted that Pentagon leaders attested to the need for EFV in 2007, when they recertified the program to Congress, as required under the Nunn-McCurdy law for such programs that experienced significant cost growth.
Moore said he believes that Nunn-McCurdy recertification–which attests to the need for and lack of alternatives to the EFV–is both a positive indicator of how it will fare in QDR, and a reason Gates did not call on April 6 for cutting it.
“I think there was the sense that we already sort of know what the QDR answer is, because we did a mini one just a couple years ago,” Moore said.
“The Defense Department…had to certify…there was a national strategy requirement for this capability, and that there was no other, better, more cost-effective way of providing that capability to the forces,” he said.
Moore maintains the once-troubled vehicle program is now “technically and programmatically on track,” after emerging late last year from the CDR with high marks (Defense Daily, Feb. 23).
Positive reliability estimates growing out of the CDR, he said, show the EFV effort currently is “a very low-risk reliability-growth program.”
“We’ve got some substantial work to do, but all of the indicators are that we’re on a very good path,” he said.
Moore noted that unlike programs Gates targeted on April 6 for cuts–such as the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet, which Gates wants to stop buying after 187 aircraft–the EFV isn’t in production.
“We’re still in development, so you got to keep the development going,” he said. “I think the CDR gave all the leadership the confidence that technically and programmatically this program is on track, and so it’s worth the continued investment of the research and development money to get us to the point that we can field it, while we look at, ‘Is 573 the right number?'”
For “many of those other programs, now is the right year to make the decision,” he added. “I think the determination (for EFV) was really, next year is the right year to make the decision, because we’ll know a ton more about programmatically and technically where we’re at.”
Moore said the first of the seven new prototypes is projected to start integration and assembly on May 24. The seven vehicles are staggered approximately one month apart in assembly, he said.
The next major step with the EFV program will be to complete assembly of the new vehicles and start functional integration, he said.
“That’s the first opportunity that we’re going to get to actually see all of these new designs on a new vehicle starting to work together,” Moore said. “That’s where we’ll start to see the first of new failure modes that will give us some clues as to how to continue to improve the reliability. So that’s going happen with the first vehicle in the August-September-October timeframe. It’ll start that functional integration. And then after that is really when the Marine Corps takes possession of that first vehicle, which will be about this time next year, because then we can actually get out, we can go back through and test all of the various performance aspects of the vehicle.”
Moore projected the first reliability demonstration of the prototypes will be in August 2010. That demonstration, he said, “will give us that next knowledge point for (determining) are we really on the right track for where we need to be for a low-risk reliability growth program.”
Four of the 10 existing, faulty EFV prototypes will be modified as well, he said.
The Marine Corps also is wrapping up the requirements work for an armor applique planned for the vehicle, Moore said. The service and General Dynamics planned for this add-on armor after lawmakers including House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) called for redesigning it to provide more underbelly protection from explosives, akin to the protection provided by the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle.
The current applique design is a modification of one presented to lawmakers last year. Taylor told Defense Daily the new armor design is an improvement from its predecessor, but he still would prefer the EFV have a V-shaped hull to deflect underbelly blasts.
A test article of the applique has not yet been produced, Moore said.