Things are bad in Marine budget land and if my guessing is correct, its gonna get worse (by that I mean the F-35's maintenance costs will be so extreme that for the lifetime of the plane we won't be able to buy new armor).
If my beliefs are correct then we must do something about the AAV.
Unless the brainiacs at BAE or General Dynamics (not including Lockheed because I don't know if they would even bid on redesign work for an existing armored vehicle) can take the existing design and improve the hydrodynamics while increasing IED protection then we've got to work with what we've got.
I've covered what needs to be done with regards to firepower, protection and over ground mobility. But what about water speed? It seems like we've almost given up on making the legacy vehicle faster in the water. I'm not sure we're doing the Marine-thing by giving up on it that easily (I'm not saying die in a ditch to get it done, but a little out of the box stuff is clearly called for).
That's when my World of Tanks research on Japanese tanks of WW2 comes into play.
Ya see World of Tanks is having a 3x experience weekend and I'm playing some of my lower tier tanks...and to HUGE success. My computer is the same with the same mediocre graphics card and processing speed so what gives? Poor play on the part of other players or is it the fact that I'm getting kills on TONS of Japanese tanks. A quick google search brought me to this beauty that I've talked about in historical terms before...the Type 2 Kai-Ma. An amphibious tank used during WW2.
So what does this have to do with the AAV? Well check out the pic below....
Yeah. A flotation device. Quite honestly a ships bow. It was disposable upon landing but most crews kept them in place because they acted as a type of spaced armor.
So. Can we use some type of "outboard motor" that can be discarded (and later recovered) upon landing to improve the speed of the AAV? Even if its just some type of pack that houses additional motors in some type of sponson at the back of the vehicle like the type used on some barges, could we get a useful boost in water speed?
I guess what I'm really talking about is taking the example of the extra fuel sponsons on the M-113 and using it to mount extra fuel and thrusters for higher water speed.
It might be goofy but somethings got to give.
