Marines ask BAE Systems to build Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACVs), vetronics, and sensors for field tests
QUANTICO, Va. – U.S. Marine Corps amphibious warfare experts are ordering Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACVs) equipped with 30-millimeter cannons for field testing under terms of an $88 million contract announced Monday.
Officials of the Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico Marine Base, Va., are asking the BAE Systems Platforms & Services segment in Sterling Heights, Mich., to design and build production-representative ACV test vehicles for upcoming fleet tests.
The ACV and its vetronics is to replace the Corps's ageing fleet of amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs). In 2018 the Marine Corps chose BAE Systems as the ACV prime contractor. This contract's potential worth is $1.9 billion.
The ACV is a wheeled armored combat vehicle able to move Marine infantry from ships offshore to fight their way onto invasion beaches. Marine Corps leaders cancelled the expensive expeditionary fighting vehicle (EFV) program in 2011.
The Marine Corps could end up purchasing as many as 204 ACV armored combat vehicles over the next few years to outfit some of its 10 amphibious assault companies — the first phase of an incremental approach to replacing the AAV, which entered service in 1972.
The ACV is designed to accommodate new capabilities in the future as technology evolves, such as reconnaissance sensors, electronic warfare (EW) equipment, anti-air sensors and weapons, and integration with uncrewed aircraft.
BAE Systems delivered the first vehicles in November 2019 to the 1st Marine Division. The first batch of 18 ACVs went to a platoon of the 1st Marine Division's 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion earlier this fall at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.
BAE Systems engineers are basing their ACV design on the Superav 8x8 amphibious armored personnel carrier developed by the Italian company Iveco Defence Vehicles.
ACV systems are designed to operate through enemy direct fire, indirect fire, and land mines with low-profile visual and infrared signatures, modular protection, and other armored vehicle technologies.
The vehicles can swim to shore from as far as 12 miles out to sea, switch from operating in the water to ground operations without pause, and then maneuver with M1 Abrams main battle tanks in a mechanized task force. The ACV can destroy relatively light enemy combat vehicles similar to itself.
The ACV will provide direct fire support for Marine infantry, and can carry 17 Marines at speeds of at least eight knots at sea amid three-foot waves with waves as large as three feet.
On shore, the ACV has high-ground clearance and a V-shaped hull to resist the effects of land mine blasts, and can operate with a wheel blown off.
Each ACV has a crew of three, an M2 .50 caliber machine gun in a remote weapons station, with the potential to install a stabilized dual-mount M2/Mark 19 grenade launcher turret.
On this order BAE Systems will do the work in Oceanside, San Jose, Goleta, and Twentynine Palms, Calif.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; Kongsberg, Norway; York and Johnstown, Pa.; Aiken, S.C.; Stafford, Va.; Minneapolis; Sterling Heights, Mich.; Phoenix; White Sands, N.M.; Bolzano, Italy, and Vicksburg, Miss., and should be finished by July 2025.
For more information contact BAE Systems Platforms & Services online at www.baesystems.com, or Marine Corps Systems Command at www.marcorsyscom.marines.mil.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
