Gates And USMC At Odds Over Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle

Will the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program fall victim to the latest round of budget cuts? Not if the USMC has its way.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has proved to be a master at divesting the services of their most beloved programs. He stopped the U.S. Air Force’s longer-term production of the F-22 and killed its combat search-and-rescue replacement (CSAR-X) plans. The Army’s Future Combat System is now just a hollow cave filled with the echo of spinoffs.

But Gates may have met his match when taking on the U.S. Marine Corps and its expeditionary fighting vehicle (EFV), which Gates has started to speculate — quite publicly — might not be worth the risk and cost.

EFV is meant to pound through enemy surf and land Marines ashore, carrying them miles inland over contested terrain.

Gates raises sound questions about whether a vehicle like this is still relevant, given the current conflicts and changing needs of war.

But the Marines also make sound counter-arguments. True, the military really hasn’t needed to storm enemy shores with a vehicle like this since World War II, but that doesn’t mean the capability — or the threat of one — isn’t needed.

The U.S. hasn’t used an atomic or nuclear weapon since the World War II either, but few would argue the country needs to scrap all major programs dedicated to keeping that capability.

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To the Marines, saving a program is just like war. It’s a matter of tactics and strategy, especially information operations, the same used in counterinsurgency. The Marines know all about that — they wrote the manual decades ago. Now they are just as dedicated to saving their EFV and, in a way, to preserving their own ethos, their own sense of being.

By: Shelldrake