Posted on 01/06/2011 5:16:58 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Pentagon Is Poised to Cancel Marine Landing Craft
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
It was supposed to be a tank that swims, a new way for the Marines to storm hostile beaches.
The vehicle was conceived to carry Marines ashore and move inland without pausing on the beach. It has faced problems in combining its land and sea technology. But as military budgets come under pressure, the 38-ton landing craft that turns into an assault vehicle seems destined to be the next bit of high-tech wizardry to bite the dust.
Pentagon and industry officials say the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, is poised to cancel the long-delayed $14.4 billion program on Thursday, when he is expected to announce a new round of belt-tightening at the Pentagon. The hybrid vehicle, being built by General Dynamics, is the most expensive weapons system to be cut since Mr. Gates canceled or trimmed three dozen programs in April 2009.
Mr. Gates is also likely on Thursday to approve a two-year delay in the Marine Corps version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, the militarys largest program, and spell out how he plans to save up to $100 billion on the Pentagons operations.
The military is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, and Mr. Gates has sought to contain the demands by ending troubled weapons systems and squeezing more efficiency out of the Pentagons bureaucracy to pay for other programs. But Congress will have the final say on many of the decisions, including the fate of the hybrid Marine vehicle, and it remains hard to tell how it will balance the fiscal demands with
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Gregory Bull/Associated Press
The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle in a test run off the coast of Oceanside, Calif. The $14.4 billion program has been plagued by delays and cost overruns.
These globalists have been using “cost cutting” as an excuse to destroy our military, even though 57% of our tax dollars go to medicare/medicaid/social security.
Our military will be that of a 3rd world country in 10 years. Pathetic.
They can save even more money by cutting perks and allowances for the General Staff and senior officers.
The EFV program is a disaster both in terms of the requirement, and the execution of the program, and should have been canceled LONG ago.
Of course,FR today is going to be filled with clueless knee-jerk comments by people totally unfamiliar with the EFV and its problems, though.
Major military procurement programs were canceled under Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.
The idea that EVERY military program is good and canceling ANY of them is treason is intellectually unsustainable.
EFV seems to fundamentally suffer from overambitious requirements. They want a vehicle that can operate on land as an APC but do 25 knots in the water and carry half a platoon of jarheads. Good grief!
Well, basically the idea is to move the amphib ships further offshore during an opposed assault.
However, advances in anti-ship missiles, etc. mean that that movement further offshore doesn’t really help anything.
And indeed trying to create an amphibious vehicle that was that fast in water basically was beyond the ability of technology to do so affordably.
And then you have added on that the EFV, once on land, is basically helpless against IEDs, and can’t really be modified to be resistant to them.
Why not hovercraft? that technology has been around for years
I’m reminded of the floating Shermans they tried to use in the Normandy invasion. Those things were floating coffins.
And what do you do when you’re on land and need to fight?
Hovercraft are not fighting vehicles.
And they’re still pulling them up from the ocean. Good show on TLC or History about a crew that pulled one up and restored it.
No thanks.
I’ll swim.
What kind of administration is it that will spend it’s
money feeding unproductive voters, but protecting
some poor shit scared jarhead assaulting an armed
foreign shore in the deployment of foreign policy
gets his protection cut in the name of “Budget”?
Good idea!
for the vehicles, we use Delorean
For our troops, Mattel can make it
For our troops, Mattel can make it
(I don't know what happened but just incase it doesn't show up again)
100% agree. Knee-jerk reaction is always to attack anything that 'appears' to be an 'attack' on the military. What is often lost in these stories, is that these 'technologies' are usually, in most cases, not 'fielded systems'. The military is not using them. They are being developed by civilian agencies/corporations with contracts from the military. The little known skeleton in the closet is that military-contracted civilian R&D is routinely plagued by cost overruns and delays, especially when developing 'hardware systems' (ie. vehicles, planes, ships, etc). This is why when cost cutting is done to the military research budget, hardware systems are usually the first to get the axe. Just look at what happened to the Future Combat Systems program, they were planning for 14 new vehicle platforms and they got gutted.
Why not? Weapons cannot be installed on hovercraft? They were in Vietnam granted maybe not heavy weapons but with drones, aircraft, missiles, light weight, rapid fire and heavy firepower weapons today I don’t see why not.
“These globalists have been using cost cutting as an excuse to destroy our military, even though 57% of our tax dollars go to medicare/medicaid/social security”
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I’m for eliminating all three entitlements. Chiefly because by the time I can get any, (25 years) there won’t be any
money left to fund them. So I get to fund the post WWII
Baby Boomers who are retiring at a rate of TEN
THOUSAND! a day for the next NINETEEN years.
So go ask them to give all that up and then we can spend as much as we like on swimming tanks.
They work well on the ocean, beach, and other open areas, but they require an ungodly footprint for the weight they carry. A hovercraft APC, with ARMOR, would be insanely huge and not very maneuverable around trees, bushes, etc. They don’t turn on a dime, while a tracked or wheeled vehicle can pivot in place. Minor hits with small arms fire would degrade the lift skirts and cripple them. Not to mention the insane horsepower required to lift and move them.
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