[Strategerist]

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.

[Lysandru]

I can only guess at the EFV's developmental problems. But they would be educated guesses since I am a former Army infantry officer as well as a systems engineer who has been working for several years in developing complex systems.

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!

[LoneStarGI]

The idea that EVERY military program is good and canceling ANY of them is treason is intellectually unsustainable.

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.

[mad_as_he$$]

I have followed the EFV program strictly from the point of view of project management. It was doomed form the start. To many requirements and too small an envelope. People have to learn to take baby steps and not throw the kitchen sink on top of every project. Running it as an old style big project also sealed it's fate. The Marines should of gone to some one like the Howe brothers for extensive proof of concept work rather than design it, build it, and find out it wasn't worth a $hit.