Marine EFV Next on Chopping Block
More good news as Secretary Gates’ knife is poised against another hi-tech boondoggle, the US Marines’ $12-billion Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. Via Danger Room:
Fundamentally, it’s a light tank (aka “fighting vehicle”) and tanks really weren’t meant to swim. Last year the Pentagon quietly halved EFV production goals to just 500 and pushed back service entry by several years in order to save money and give General Dynamics more time to work out design kinks. Now Bruno thinks the EFV might just go the way of the Navy’s recently-axed stealth destroyer. “Its time in the spotlight is coming,” he writes.
But Marines still need a way to get from ship to shore under an umbrella of armor, right? Well, maybe not …
Now get this:
Bear in mind that the Marines haven’t launched a full-scale amphibious assault using armored vehicles and landing craft since the Korean War. In the decades since, helicopter assaults and inland counter-insurgency fights have replaced Iwo Jima-style beach invasions.
This latter statement echoes what yours truly said in a recent Oped “Does America Need a “Gator Navy?”:
Except for the new helicopter carriers, which is a major increase in capability, plus fast hovercraft replacing slower landing craft, the US Marines follow basically the same tactics as their forbearers in World War 2. The Navy justifies the continued existence of such expensive and vulnerable warships on the success of numerous bushfire wars during the Cold War, and ongoing into the current War on Terror. With the exception of the Inchon Landings in 1950, occurring previous to the Missile Age, America has yet to launch a single major amphibious landing on a defended beach.
Apparently someone is listening. More info via the Ares Blog.
New Wars 
Aviation Week is a highly respected and influential defense publication. David Axe is a well known and respected journalist who has filmed his visits to Iraq and Afghanistan for C-span. But what do they know, right?
Uhh, this is basically circular speculation, not a real threat of losing the program. One blog speculates, another pics it up, and then a blog on Wired says “see, looks like they may cancel the EFV”…. when the “they” was a blogger most people have never heard of.
One, the Navy/Marine Corps team would have to completely chuck their “over the horizon” amphibous assault strategy… current tractors just aren’t fast enough in the water to make OTH feasible.
Two, the Marines won’t have enough Ospreys (and the Navy enough LCAC’s) to get everyone on target in a timely fashion without some of them going in smaller vehicles.
Three, if history is any guide, just as soon as we get rid of amphibious landing capabilities, we’ll need it again. Wars have a notorious way of proving that old is new again. See Korea, where in 1947, the Army said amphibious operations would never happen again. Surprise surprise. The Marines, wiser than their Army counterparts, knew differently, and kept their equipment well maintained in storage.
Argue about the merits of the EFV, but this is basically speculation based on someone else’s speculation.