Description
The Weapon System
The EFV is a self-deploying, high water speed, fully tracked, NBC protected, armored amphibious personnel carrier. It carries 17 or 18 combat equipped Marines and a crew of three. Main armament is a M242 Bushmaster 30mm cannon, smoke grenade launcher system, and M240 coaxial mounted machine gun. It can achieve high water speed in excess of 20 knots with a single 2,700+ hp diesel engine. Land mobility is equivalent to the M1A1 tank. The mission of the EFV is to provide high speed transport of embarked marine infantry from ships located beyond the horizon to inland objectives and to provide armor protected land mobility and direct fire support during land combat operations.
Production Status, Population, and Planned Life
Milestone 1 was achieved in 1995 and a PDRR contract was awarded in June
1996. First prototype vehicle roll out occurred in June 1999. The program had
its Milestone II review in November 2000 and entered System Development and
Demonstration the following
month. Planned
production is 935 of the base EFV(P) variant and 78 of the EFV(C)
command and control variant for a total of 1,013 vehicles.
Production readiness, low rate initial production, and operational test and evaluation are planned between FY05 and FY08.
Prime contractor: General Dynamics Amphibious Systems
Office of Primary Responsibility: Direct Reporting Program Manager (DRPM) AAA, Woodbridge, VA.
R-TOC Focus Areas: (From USD (AT&L) memorandum dated May 10, 1999)
- Reduced demand from weapon systems via reliability and maintainability improvements
- Engine Producibility: Producibility enhancements and design
simplifications initiative approved for funding and contract
awarded 9 March 00.
- 30mm Joint Ammo TOC Initiative: Effort will develop, qualify,
and field a DoD common family of 30mm X 173mm ammunition.
- Propulsor Design: The program is exploring use of forgings instead of castings for propulsor inlet housings, to reduce weight and avoid cracks when welded onto the hull.
- Spray Cooling: Develop a spray cool chassis to allow COTS
processors to operate in the EFV environment. This program has been
undertaken jointly with another R-TOC Pilot, the EA-6B and is potentially applicable to numerous other DoD platforms.
- Reduced supply chain response times, leading to reduced spares, system support footprint, and depot needs
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Condition Based Maintenance. The program is developing an approach that will use prognostics to predict the remaining useful life of components and therefore support smart maintenance decisions, reduce the number of depot overhauls over the vehicle life, and avoid collateral damage.
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The program office is developing Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals for the new system.
- Competitive sourcing of product support, leading to streamlining and overhead reductions
- Supportability Trades (Source of supply, Source of support, CLS). A detailed
briefing on the results of the Depot Source of Repair
analysis was provided to OSD in November 2001. The program is adapting the O&S Cost Analysis Model (OSCAM) to help support development of EFV©ös future product life cycle support plans.
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