Storming the Beach

[Tukhachevskii]

It is the USMC vision that concerns me - thus my reference to EFV & V22.
The justification for these platforms always comes back to some very contestable assumptions.

In fact, it's not just the USMC vision, but ideas about the capabilities of future regular threats in general that always seem to default to "this is how we would like them to be, to justify our equipment program."

Building a better mousetrap: The Unnecessary Capability of the EFV from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (link may be fernickity)

Yet the overwhelming impetus driving the development of the EFV is operational maneuver from the sea [OMFTS]. The vision behind the EFV is one in which a group of vehicles move from apmphibious shipping twenty-five nautical miles from the shoreline and then travel at a high speed to a littoral penetration point to come ashore and seamlessly complete some tactical mission.
The layout and construction of the EFV have been optimised for that high speed movement over water. but this is not a reasonable focus. The mission profile guidance originally given to the EFV (then the AAAV) team was for a 20% operational time in the water and 80% on land. Since then, the mean operational time in the water for all envisioned EFV missions has been revised to 8.2%[!]. Thus the Marine Corps predicts the EFV to operate eight out of every one hundred hours of vehicle operation in water.
If the Marine Corps had fielded the EFV in January of 2001, the high water speed capability would not have been used in either Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation IIraqi Freedom both expeditionary operations by any standard. (p.9-10)

Marine Corps Equipment After Iraq from the Centre for American Progress.

It [the EFV] is significantly faster on water, slighty faster on land, and has betetr armor and firepower than the AAV. On land, the EFV is also larger, more powerful, and has betetr communications than other armored personnel carriers, including the Army's Bradley. It only lacks increased armor protection, which the Marines have readily sacrificed for greater mobility. Even though the cost of the EFV has jumped to more than $12 million per vehicle....(p.14)

That last statistic made my eyes water, was a time when you could buy a JAS 39 Gripen fighter for that much (c. 1995-ish). Talk about inflation. If I'm not mistaken an M1A1 costs about $5million?


The Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV): Background and Issues for Congress from the ever informative Congressional Research Service

Twenty years ago when the EFV was conceived, some defense officials suggested that the fleet could operate 20 to 30 miles from the shore, debarking EFVs for amphibious operations, but with the advent of these new weapons [anti-ship missiles, mines, small fast attack craft, etc.] and tactics, this is no longer possible. Instead in order to sufficiently protect the large amphibious ships that transport Marines and EFVs, it has been suggested that the fleet might need to operate at least 100 miles from shore - beyond the EFV's range.(p.7)