This is beyond depressing. They're slow walking the ACV and this timeline is not to be believed, in essence the AAV will serve until 2035 (that is a service life longer than an aircraft carrier and twice as long as an amphibious assault ship)!!! Additionally we're being told that ACV 1.2 (more than likely) the same vehicle will be bought in STARTING around 2025. Then it gets really goofy. Around 2030 they're telling us that they'll buy an ACV 1.3 (which will be the usual upgrade to the ACV 1.1) or move on to a high water speed ACV 2.0.
My confidence in this being followed is ZERO (what should really burn people up is the fact that the Patria AMV that was demonstrated for the USMC is ALREADY OBSOLETE and they've moved on to a modernized version....this vehicle will be day old bread before it even enters service!!!).
How could it get worse? Shermans War has stated on his blog and I've linked it here that the USMC will soon have just a little over 60 M1A1 Abrams Tanks in its active duty component. TOTAL! More troubling? In actuality the Abrams and AAVs are essentially being quietly taken out of active duty by the powers that be.
Rant begins (you were warned). What are they basing these decisions on? No studies. No debates. No rationale for the decision. All we have is the fact that an airpower centric Commandant held the keys to the kingdom and we had no advocate for ground power willing to speak up. Your leadership in the United States Marine Corps is failing the institution and the nation. Small Wars, SOCOM, Air Power advocates got control of the budget and the Corps will lose badly with many unnecessary injuries and deaths on future battlefields. Rant over.
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