Commitment to swimming vehicle throws off Marines' tight modernization schedule.

• Author: Parsons, Dan

* As with other large vehicle procurement programs, Congress is slowly draining off funding from the Amphibious Combat Vehicle as Marine Corps officials continue to push off a decision on how it will develop it.

Continuing delays in ACV development have had a domino effect on the service's ambitious and once tightly choreographed modernization plan that includes three new procurement programs. The service remains committed to purchasing several thousand joint light tactical vehicles to replace Humvees. After ACV, plans were to purchase several hundred Marine Personnel Carriers, but that program has been put on hold to free up resources.

Capt. Nicole Fiedler, a spokeswoman for the amphibious combat vehicle team, said a study is in the works to "determine the feasibility, costs and risks of developing a survivable, affordable, high-water-speed ACV."

"We are still conducting this study and are on track to support the commandant's decision in the fall," Fiedler wrote in an email.

The analysis has included surveys of enlisted Marines to determine the most important characteristics of an amphibious combat vehicle. The most contentious vehicle attribute has been how fast it should go through the water. A faster vehicle can move from ship to shore quickly, which lessens Marines' exposure to enemy fire and reduces the likelihood they will become seasick. But a faster vehicle is a more costly vehicle.

Between July and August, the ACV team ranked preferences provided by Marines, and applied cost and weight data as part of their feasibility recommendations to senior Marine Corps and defense leaders ahead of an anticipated request for proposals sometime in the fall.

Program representatives held sessions with deployed forces at the Marine Air-Ground Task Force level to determine the importance of high speed through the water in amphibious operations.

Affordability and ensuring that desired characteristics are technologically realistic are key to the renewed amphibious vehicle search. The ACV's predecessor ultimately passed neither test and was summarily canceled. Marine Corps officials are haunted by the ghost of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which ate $3 billion before being killed by its own creators in January 2011, said Dean Lockwood, senior weapons systems analyst at Forecast International. The failure of that program is making Marine Corps brass "skittish" about asking Congress to fund ACV, he said.

"The Marine Corps is definitely still...