Marines Declare Current ACV Design Meets All Ship-to-Shore Requirements as Testing Continues -...

The Marine Corps has put the Amphibious Combat Vehicle through its paces in the eight months since the service selected BAE Systems to build the new wheeled vehicles, using the original 16 ACVs to conduct high surf testing and cold weather/cold water testing around the country.

The vehicle has performed so well in these tests that the service is officially ditching the original plan to gradually insert the full ship-to-shore swim capability – that robust in-water performance was not required in the original ACV 1.1 and would instead be introduced in a later 1.2 increment – and has instead certified that these first vehicles can perform all ship-to-shore missions without assistance from a connector.

BAE Systems is expected to deliver the first vehicles to the Marine Corps in late May or early June, after winning the program in June and being awarded a second Lot 2 contract in December. Even as the York, Pa., production line is churning, the Marines haven’t wasted any time learning more about the vehicles or beginning to train Marines how to operate them, Col. Kirk Mullins, ACV product manager, told USNI News.

A team of ACV operators from BAE Systems and the Marines’ new equipment training team have been working together to continue reliability growth testing with the 16 vehicles produced under BAE’s engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract, Mullins said, with part of that testing designed to determine whether the vehicle could meet all ACV 1.2 requirements and allow the Marines to collapse the two-part program development into a single increment.