Amphibious combat vehicle competition to heat up.

• Author: Insinna, Valerie

In its efforts to replace the 30-year-old amphibious assault vehicle, the Marine Corps has traversed a long and bumpy road. After three decades, billions of dollars and multiple programs spent trying to develop a technologically-advanced, high speed amphibious combat vehicle, the service decided in 2014 to procure a non-developmental vehicle and rely on connectors to ferry its troops to shore.

The first phase of the ACV competition will intensify this year, with a final request for proposals to be released in February. After proposals are received, the Marine Corps plans to downselect to two vendors as early as this fall.

Industry officials are hopeful that the Marine Corps' need for an AAV replacement is dire enough that the program will be able to weather the upcoming storm of sequestration.

"There's always concern about budgets in a time of uncertainty," said Tom Watson, Navy and Marine Corps group senior vice president for SAIC, one of the companies vying for the ACV contract. "With sequestration hanging out there, I would be loathe to tell you that I wasn't fearful for all of our programs, but I believe that this particular program has very strong support from senior Marine Corps leadership."

Of the competitors, three have teamed with foreign defense companies to pitch modified, off-the-shelf ACVs: Lockheed Martin's Havoc is a version of Finnish company Patria's 8x8 armored modular vehicle, SAIC is proposing Singapore Technologies Kinetics' Terrex infantry carrier vehicle, and BAE Systems has partnered with Italian manufacturer Iveco to offer the Superav. General Dynamics Land Systems is proposing its light armored vehicle 6.0, company officials have said.

The ACV competition emerged from the ashes of two canceled programs. The service originally planned to purchase two different vehicles--the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle to rapidly transport Marines to shore, and the Marine Personnel Carrier, which would provide additional land mobility.

However, the high water-speed capability desired in the EFV was not found to be technically feasible without making sacrifices to survivability and lethality, said Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, deputy commandant of combat development and integration and the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

"You can actually get a vehicle about that size to get on top of the plane and do 25 knots, but at a price, and that was not only just in dollars, it was capability of the...