Lawmakers eye redesign of Marine land-sea vehicle

Leaders of a key House Armed Services subcommittee are urging the Marine Corps to consider redesigning the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle to give troops better protection against roadside bombs.

In a June 29 letter to Marine Corps Commandant James Conway, Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and ranking member Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said they have "specific, unanswered concerns for the vehicle design in the face of a changing battlefield environment."

The letter followed a June 26 subcommittee hearing on the vehicle, at which Taylor and Bartlett questioned whether the EFV could protect troops from improvised explosive devices, still the most common and lethal threat to U.S. troops in Iraq.

In particular, Taylor and Bartlett want information on whether the Marine Corps could redesign the bottom of the vehicle with a v-shaped hull to better protect against IEDs. The vehicle, designed to race across open water at more than 25 miles an hour and drive across land at 45 mph, has a flat bottom, similar to the military's fleet of Humvees.

Despite the military's efforts to add armor to the Humvees, roadside bombs "have continued to wreak havoc" on them, Taylor and Bartlett wrote. In response, the military is rapidly buying the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, which features the V-shaped bottom. "This type of vehicle has proven to save lives," according to the letter.

During the hearing, Marine Corps officials argued that going to a v-shaped hull would mean sacrificing speed when the vehicle skids across the water. Taylor and Bartlett acknowledged that in their letter, but they requested more detailed information from Conway or his senior staff.

"We are concerned that while the current design of the EFV, which began pre-development over 10 years ago, provides for substantial armor protection, it may not take the lessons learned concerning current asymmetric threats into account," they wrote. "Although we understand there may be tradeoffs in other mission performance parameters, we wonder if the Marine Corps has fully considered a v-shaped bottom for the EFV -- particularly at this point in the program, when a re-design is still possible."

The EFV is intended to be one of several revolutionary platforms designed to give the Marines improved speed and maneuverability in expeditionary or amphibious operations. But the program has been plagued by reliability issues and cost hikes, leading Pentagon officials to make major changes in the program.

The Marine Corps is changing its payments to prime contractor General Dynamics Corp., and imposing greater government supervision of the program. The Corps also intends to delay operational availability by four years. The EFV will cost $17 million each -- nearly three times the cost projected years ago.

Meanwhile, the prototype vehicles averaged only 4.5 hours between breakdowns during tests, far below the requirement for production vehicles, which must last 43 hours between repairs. In the memo, which was largely focused on the force protection issue, Taylor and Bartlett said they "remain concerned about the cost and schedule performance of this program."