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Officials: EFV unreliable, needs redesign

The Marine Corps has been forced back to the drawing board with its plans for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which officials say is unreliable and in need of a redesign.

The amphibious-assault EFV prototype — the planned replacement to the assault amphibian vehicle — is so old and flawed, Corps officials say, that seven new vehicles must be built for testing. The redesign will add at least three years to the program, at a cost of about $300 million annually.

Marine officials had anticipated buying 15 EFVs this year, but the Pentagon’s budget request released Monday said those buys won’t be made before fiscal 2010. Budget projections say the Corps will buy 300 by the end of fiscal 2013.

Dave Branham, a spokesman for the EFV program, defended the program, saying the vehicle is able to do many of the things it was designed to do.

Testing has shown the EFV can go 30 mph in the water for more than an hour; carry a reinforced rifle squad of about 18 leathernecks with their gear; is compatible with Navy amphibious ships; and can punch through surf zones.

However, the vehicle has not shown that it is reliable; it breaks down about every eight hours, Branham said.

There are other operational snags, such as steering. EFV evaluators found that even when they removed one ton of armor from the vehicle, it could not accelerate unless the driver was “hands-free” during steering, officials with the Defense Department’s Operational Testing and Evaluation office said in a recent report.

“This technique typically led to large, unpredictable turns in the water. This is an unsafe condition for combat,” the future weapons programs report said.

“We have a lot of confidence that we can fix the known issues,” said Peter Keating, a spokesman for General Dynamics, the manufacturer. “What is yet to be determined, and what we have to do now, is make sure testing procedures and the data derived from them are going to give us the right information to continue to build confidence in the reliability of the vehicle as we move forward.”

Fixing the design problems will take time, said Col. John Bryant, EFV program manager. “I project that in order to improve the reliability of the design and build prototypes ... I’ll need somewhere in the vicinity of three years,” he said.

Pentagon acquisition officials will meet next month to decide the future of the program, Bryant said.

“Anytime a program experiences difficulty, a program manager worries his program might get canceled. But the Marine Corps is committed to this capability,” he said. “One way or another, we have to get this right.”