Another Military Procurement Fail

The legacy Marine Corps "Amphibious Assault Vehicles" (AAV) require immense maintenance and have profound readiness issues as a result. Their new "Amphibious Combat Vehicle" (ACV) replacement has also been taken out of commission because it doesn't work properly. 

An ACV

The good news is that there hasn't been a militarily important amphibious assault by the U.S. military since the Korean War, about seven decades ago, and the last such assault of any kind was in Kuwait, about three decades ago. And, none of the places where the U.S. Marine Corps is most likely to deploy in the near future require this capability. So, the U.S. military can probably manage without this resource for now. For now, this is just a colossal waste of time and money. 

A defense industry trade journal report explains the situation:

The Marine Corps has permanently pulled amphibious assault vehicles from “regularly scheduled deployments” due to concerns over vehicle safety and resources allocation . . . . After a tragic July 2020 sinking that killed nine troops, AAV operations had been halted. But the Marine Corps renewed its waterborne operations in the spring of 2021, believing the issues had been fixed and operational requirements had been improved. . . . In September the Marine Corps beached the AAV’s replacement, the amphibious combat vehicle, due to issues with its towing mechanism. Stenger said the ACV is still prevented from conducting waterborne operations, leaving the Corps with no amphibious landing vehicles that it can train with in the water. . . . The thorough inspection, based off of initial tests developed by the manufacturers, found that nearly all AAVs in the Marine Corps leaked at unacceptable rates.

Only 10 of 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion’s nearly 200 vehicles passed the more intense inspection, Operations Officer Marine Maj. Justin Davis said while testifying at a board of inquiry for the unit’s former battalion commander, Lt. Col. Keith Brenize, on Dec. 7 at Quantico, Virginia. He said he believed the 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion did slightly better than his battalion. . . . AAVs are extremely maintenance heavy,” he added, noting that an AAV typically requires eight hours of maintenance for every hour of operation.

Another report add this analysis:

The Marine Corps received their new ACVs in 2020 and slowly began phasing out the AAV, which by 2020 had been in service for nearly half a century. However, the road to fielding an AAV replacement has been rocky.

An earlier AAV replacement called the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) attempted to combine all of the Corps’ desires onto one platform: the EFV sported a powerful 30 mm cannon and was incredibly fast on water thanks to a retractable bow flap that gave the EFV speedboat-like speeds. In addition, twin water jets at the EFV’s rear powered the vehicle while in the water, and retractable flaps covered the EFV’s tracks in the water, giving it a very smooth underwater profile.

Despite high hopes and high performance while on land or maneuvering at sea, the EFV was plagued with reliability problems, and breakdowns were common. Moreover, the Marine Corps’ focus on land warfare after 9/11, coupled with the program’s ballooning cost, ultimately led the Corps to ax the program.

Though in USMC service, the new ACV is far from perfect. One Marine Corps evaluation called for several modifications to the vehicle, including a modified troop commander station to aid vehicle ingress, improved vehicle recovery capabilities should the ACV need support, and improved protection for the vehicle’s suspension and steering from debris encountered on the battlefield, concertina wire in particular. So while the ACV is already in service, the Corps still has some work to do on the vehicle to ensure battlefield effectiveness and safety.