By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps continues to defend plans for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), keeping a hopeful eye on new prototypes unveiled just as Defense Secretary Robert Gates again questioned the need for the amphibious tracked tank.
Lt. Gen. George Flynn, head of Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) and deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told a Senate panel late last week the service needs the EFV for “multiple roles.”
“The role that it performs is the ability to get us as quickly ashore, to be able to use the sea as maneuver space, but at the other times, designed to be a fighting vehicle on shore,” he said. “It has been sized to what we believe is the minimum requirement, which is…a two-brigade size assault.”
Flynn testified before the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee on May 6, two days after the Marine Corps unveiled a new EFV prototype and three days after Gates called the EFV effort a prime example of a future plan that should be adjusted “as the strategic environment evolves.” The vehicle is intended to quickly carry combat-ready Marines to land from ships 25 miles off shore.
Speaking May 3 at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference, Gates described the EFV as a platform “to get large numbers of troops from ship to shore under fire.”
“No doubt, it was a real strategic asset during the first Gulf War to have a flotilla of Marines waiting off Kuwait City, forcing Saddam’s army to keep one eye on the Saudi border and one eye on the coast,” Gates said. “But we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again, especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore.”
“On a more basic level, in the 21st century, what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios; and then, how much?” Gates added.
Flynn, the Marine Corps’ top requirements-setter, meanwhile, told the Seapower panel that the EFV is needed for new operating concepts calling for using seabases as operating bases and the sea as maneuver space. Amphibious and power-projection capabilities should not be defined by “events of the past,” he testified.
“As we look to the requirements of the future and what is demanded by the new security environment, I think we need to go to more recent history,” Flynn said. He cited the amphibious withdrawal from Somalia, projecting power into Afghanistan with task force 58, the noncombat evacuation of Lebanon supported by troops’ ability–albeit untapped–to come ashore, partnership engagements around the world, and responses to humanitarian disasters.
“That’s how we’re looking at defining the requirement,” Flynn said. He acknowledged U.S. troops probably will not storm hostile beaches in major future operations, but said major amphibious landings are possible.
Flynn and Navy acquisition czar Sean Stackley told the Seapower panel the EFV program’s future hinges on the performance of seven new prototypes, which are reworks of flawed test vehicles in the once-troubled General Dynamics [GB] vehicle program.
The Marine Corps displayed the first of the seven new prototypes at a May 4 event at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va. The service is poised to take delivery of the first test vehicle in the coming weeks, and General Dynamics is slated to deliver subsequent copies in the following months.
“We’re going to go through the (testing) phase so that we can make a final decision on the viability of the program after we see how the seven test vehicles perform,” Flynn told Seapower subcommittee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.). “If they don’t meet the knowledge points (the vehicle must pass), sir, then we’re not going to stick with the program. They have to meet their performance parameters to reach the knowledge points.”
Reed questioned how the relatively low production rate planned for the EFV meshes Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway’s stance that the EFV is a critical centerpiece of his service’s forcible-entry capability. The Marine Corps reduced the planned number of EFVs to 573 earlier this decade amid program hiccups earlier this decade.
The EFV effort, which suffered significant cost and technical problems, was restructured and successfully emerged in 2008 from a Critical Design Review that determined the new vehicle design has favorable reliability estimates. As part of a second System Design and Development effort, General Dynamics has built the seven redesigned prototypes and modified existing, faulty test vehicles.
Pentagon officials opted against canceling the EFV during the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review process with the understanding the coveted Marine Corps program would not proceed to production without passing thorough testing. President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget request calls for delaying the EFV effort by a year by having its procurement funding start in FY ’12.