By Emelie Rutherford
The Pentagon is poised to kick off the process of shutting down the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program and issue requests to industry on three related vehicle efforts in the coming weeks, a top Marine Corps official said yesterday.
Congress will not start officially vetting Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plan to kill the EFV, as part of an array of proposed budget cuts, until after President Barack Obama releases his proposed fiscal year 2012 Pentagon budget in early February. While there have been rumblings from lawmakers about trying to salvage at least part of the EFV effort, with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) counting himself among the supporters, the Marine Corps is moving forward to dismantle it.
Lt. Gen. George Flynn, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told reporters yesterday that his service has no plans to keep alive the long-delayed General Dynamics [GD] program to develop an amphibious tracked vehicle.
“We’re not looking at any option that would have us buy EFVs,” he said during a conference call.
When Gates last week proposed $178 billion in funding cuts and shifts within the Pentagon budget over the next five years, he called for the EFV’s demise and lamented that it has cost $3 billion to develop and would cost another $12 billion to build.
Flynn yesterday said the core problem with the EFV, which looks to have overcome technical challenges it faced in the past, was its high price tag; he said the EFV’s cost rose from $5 million a vehicle to $18 million a piece, in FY ’11 dollars, since the program began.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense soon will release an acquisition decision memorandum (ADM) for the EFV program’s shutdown, Flynn said. He said it was his understanding that that document would be released “within the next two weeks.”
Just how much of the FY ’11 funds allocated for the EFV would be spent on a successor amphibious vehicle program, called the New Amphibious Vehicle (NAV), will depend on the release of the ADM and negotiations with General Dynamics for shut-down costs, Flynn said.
The EFV effort, which suffered a significant cost breach and technical problems earlier this decade, was restructured and successfully emerged in 2008 from a critical design review that determined the new vehicle design had favorable reliability estimates. As part of a second system design and development effort, formalized in a $766.8 million contract awarded in 2008, General Dynamics built the seven redesigned prototypes and modified existing, faulty test vehicles.
Flynn said the new EFV prototypes will be allowed to complete reliability-growth testing that has been underway since last October and is expected to wrap up late this month or early next month. While the results of those critical tests were expected to be used to decide whether to continue the EFV program, Flynn said now that the Pentagon wants to kill the vehicle the test data will be used to inform the NAV effort.
The process of developing that forthcoming amphibious tank also will kick off around the end of January with a request for information (RFI) issued to industry, Flynn said.
“We’re reviewing the requirement (for the NAV) now as part of the development of the RFI,” Flynn said, adding that that RFI document is “about 90 percent complete.”
Asked how the requirements for the NAV will differ from the EFV’s, Flynn said: “I think we need to look at the time-distance factors of coming ashore. I think we’ve got to take a fresh look at the protection levels, based on a changed threat. Complexity and maintainability are something else that we have to take a look at.”
The Marine Corps plans to release a total of three RFIs to industry in the coming weeks, he said. The other two requests will seek information from industry on a Marine Personnel Carrier based on a commercially available vehicle and on upgrading the existing Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) the EFV was intended to replace.
After the Marine Corps collects input from industry in response to the RFIs it will have a better sense how much each of the three efforts would cost, Flynn said.
Navy Under Secretary Bob Work told congressional aides on Tuesday that if the EFV is canceled the Marine Corps would have $2.588 billion over the next five years that it could redirect to other efforts, including developing NAVs, upgrading AAVs, buying MPCs, recapitalizing Humvees, and procuring a range of other equipment (Defense Daily, Jan. 12).
Work is said to have told aides $500 million would be available for the NAV over five years. Flynn declined yesterday to cite an figure for the NAV’s development cost, but said the range over five years is approximately $500 million.
“But to say that is the exact number right now, I wouldn’t want to be pinned down on that right now, because we may be able to move faster (on its development), and if we can move faster we may need to allocate more money up front in that program,” he said. He noted “ballpark figures” for armored vehicles range $4 million to $12 million each.
“So I think what we would be looking for is for the vehicle to fall somewhere within that range.”
Flynn said he would like to see the NAV developed in less than eight years, but cautioned the timeframe is hard to predict now. Pentagon leaders have committed to using new speedy acquisition processes to try to ensure the NAV’s development does not stretch on for decades, he added.
General Dynamics wants lawmakers to compel the Marine Corps to keep developing the EFV, but to purchase 200 instead of 573 vehicles. Reducing the buy to 200 vehicles would save $4.6 billion from the current estimated cost for the EFV program, while still outfitting two Marine Expeditionary Brigades, the company said.