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[Blindé] Programme Marine Personnal Carrier, maintenant ACV-1.1


Serge
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Attention. En avril 2014, le programme MPC est devenu ACV-1.1.

Dans le cadre du programme du transport de troupe de l'US-Marine Corps, les industriels américains présentent leur solution au Modern Day Marine.

La proposition de BAE, un SuperAV italien amélioré:

1MM70172.jpg

http://blogs.defensenews.com/modern-day-marine/2012/09/25/bae-shows-off-marine-personnel-carrier/

Modifié par Serge
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Voici deux photos du Havoc de Loockheed-Martin un des quatre compétiteurs:

Image IPB

Image IPB

Ici présenté avec une protection statistique RPGNet (identique à celle du VBCI).

Pour ceux qui se posent la question, ce programme ne vise pas à remplacer l'AAV-7A1 mais à compléter son successeur.

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SAIC propose le Terrex singapourien:

ST Kinetics and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) have joined forces to participate in the US Marine Corps (USMC) Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) programme.

Image IPB

SAIC Landforce Systems operation manager and senior vice president Dan Zanini said the team will base its offering on the modern Terrex 8x8 Armoured Personnel Carrier already fielded by the Singapore Armed Forces.

"By using existing and proven technology, tailored to Marine expeditionary requirements, we will be able to quickly deliver a simple, elegant, enduring and USMC-usable capability to meet the programme's critical needs and schedule," Zanini added.

ST Kinetics executive vice president and chief marketing officer Patrick Choy said: "We are confident that the advanced design of the Terrex, particularly in the areas of survivability and crew habitability, will underpin an effective and affordable solution usable by the US Marines in a myriad of tough environments."

The advanced eight-wheeled highly protected and swim-capable armoured personnel carrier will provide USMC infantry formations with balanced performance, protection, and payload, while ensuring effectiveness across a full range of military missions.

As per the agreement, the prime contractor for the MPC programme will be SAIC.

The MPC programme is scheduled for seven years with production of nearly 100 units annually while the testing and demonstration phase initial awards are expected in April 2012.

ST Kinetics' Terrex is capable of carrying a remote control weapon system (RCWS) armed with a 0.5" HMG, a coaxial 40mm/7.62MG or a 30mm cannon, and features an integrated camera for enhanced situational awareness and mine blast protection.

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En fait, en terme de transport de troupe, l'USMC n'a que des AAV-7A1 et des camions.

Leurs engagements leurs ont fait se demander si un blindé à roues ne serait pas nécessaire. La réponse fut oui pour un blindé avec de bonnes capacités amphibies que l'on classerait en "médian". Ils ne veulent surtout pas un blindé lourd.

Pour l'EFV, le programme a été abandonné car prohibitif. Ainsi, il font deux choses:

- ils étudient une nouvelle modernisation de l'AAV pour tenir la distance.

- ils étudient un nouveau programme de blindé d'assaut amphibie mais avec des objectifs plus réalistes.

Le futur sera donc une force d'après AAV-7 + MPC + camions

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Les LAV-25 ne sont pas des transports de troupe pour l'USMC mais des blindés de reconnaissance.

Rappelons que la LAV existe dans l'USMC en version:

- Poste de commandement

- Anti-chars

- Défense-aérienne

- Logistique

- Guerre-électronique

- Dépannage

- Reconnaissance (LAV-25)

Et il est fort à parier que si leur concept de RECO est conservé, alors le MPC connaîtra une version pour remplacer les LAV-25.

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Les LAV-25 ne sont pas des transports de troupe pour l'USMC mais des blindés de reconnaissance.

Rappelons que la LAV existe dans l'USMC en version:

- Poste de commandement

- Anti-chars

- Défense-aérienne

- Logistique

- Guerre-électronique

- Dépannage

- Reconnaissance (LAV-25)

Et il est fort à parier que si leur concept de RECO est conservé, alors le MPC connaîtra une version pour remplacer les LAV-25.

+1
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Les LAV-25 ne sont pas des transports de troupe pour l'USMC mais des blindés de reconnaissance.

Rappelons que la LAV existe dans l'USMC en version:

- Poste de commandement

- Anti-chars

- Défense-aérienne

- Logistique

- Guerre-électronique

- Dépannage

- Reconnaissance (LAV-25)

ll y  aussi la version mortier

La verson défense AA (le Blazer) a été retirée du service aprés OIF je crois.

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  • 5 months later...

Poursuite des évaluations des candidats; le Havoc:

Lockheed Martin has announced that its Havoc 8x8 Armored Modular Vehicle has successfully completed amphibious testing as part of its evaluation for the Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) competition.

The testing, conducted in and near the surf at the US Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, saw the Havoc undergo trials while loaded to its full combat weight. According to Lockheed Martin, the vehicle demonstrated its resistance to water penetration while accommodating a full complement of marine corps battle gear for the crew.

Scott Greene, vice president of Ground Vehicles for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said: ‘The Havoc 8x8 showed its ability to negotiate all surf and wave conditions required by the United States Marine Corps. The vehicle maintained 100 percent operational readiness throughout the test.’

Lockheed Martin is offering the Havoc 8x8 vehicle as part of a team that includes Patria Land Systems, and the vehicle is an evolution of the Patria 8x8 Armored Modular Vehicle.  The multi-mission, expeditionary ground combat vehicle is configured to allow for a wide range of weapons, sensor and communications options to address evolving mission requirements. Employing the baseline architecture of the Patria vehicle, Havoc features advanced mobility and transportability, and can protect its crew against a variety of extreme threats.

Teams led by BAE Systems, SAIC, and General Dynamics are also providing demonstration and study vehicles for this phase of the competition. The programme aims to develop a range of personnel carrier, command and recovery vehicles to meet the requirements of the US Marine Corps. The successful vehicle is expected to enter service in 2015.

http://www.shephardmedia.com/news/landwarfareintl/lockheed-martin-havoc-completes-amphibious-testing/
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  • 1 month later...

Image IPB

BAE Systems and Iveco Defence Vehicles successfully completed 12 days of rigorous wheeled amphibious vehicle evaluations as part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) Continued Systems Demonstration and Studies contract.

The successful evaluation of the team’s 8x8 MPC, which is derived from Iveco’s SUPERAV, included a series of Water Performance Demonstrations in various sea conditions, as well as an evaluation of Human Factors and Stowage Capacity.

“The highly experienced team of BAE Systems and IVECO presented an impressive 26-ton, open-ocean, swim-capable vehicle that exceeded all projected vehicle requirements,” said John Swift, BAE Systems’ MPC program director. “Despite a demanding program, our MPC was completed on schedule and on budget. It will provide our Marine Corps customer with a highly maneuverable solution both in water and on land, with excellent amphibious capabilities and a high level of survivability.”

During testing, the Marine Corps required demonstrations of the vehicle’s maneuverability on land and at sea, as well as the vehicle’s load capacity – the ability to accommodate a reinforced Marine rifle squad and allow for a quick and efficient personnel exit. BAE Systems’ MPC exceeded all vehicle requirements, performing personnel exit drills in less than 17 seconds and showcasing an advanced interior layout and compartmentalization that allows for the stowage of more than three days of supplies without jeopardizing the survivability of the vehicle and personnel.

The testing took place at the Amphibious Vehicle Test Branch (AVTB), in Camp Pendleton, California. All demonstrations highlighted the MPC’s agility and unique ability to navigate within an open ocean environment, and reinforced similar testing conducted on the SUPERAV by Iveco Defence Vehicles that included ship launch and recovery and surf zone transitions. The joint BAE Systems and Iveco Defence Vehicles team is now preparing for survivability demonstrations planned for this summer at the Nevada Automotive Test Center.

The BAE Systems MPC is purpose built to provide Marines with an outstanding balance of protection, performance and payload. The vehicle is designed to fill the medium-armor ground vehicle gap and complements the capabilities of the Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV), the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). The MPC will be a flexible and highly mobile asset for the Marines that will be well protected, sustainable, networked and include a strong swim capability. As mobile as the lightest and as protected as the heaviest comparable solutions, the MPC offers a true, no-compromise 8x8 amphibious platform.

http://www.asdnews.com/mobile/news/48988/Marine_Personnel_Carrier_Proves_Superior_Amphibious_Capabilities.htm
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  • 4 weeks later...

une question :

si se véhicule est choisi  :

se véhicule sera là pour remplacer le AAVP7 ,qui en tant que engin de transport pouvait se permettre d'embarquer un paquet de personnels (au moins deux groupes à 13 pax chacun ) ,alors que là avec se 8x8 ,on n'aura peut-être pas la place pour 13 personnels en soute arrière .

sa risque de modifier l'organisation des groupes ,enfin en se qui concerne les déplacements dans se type de véhicule .

avec le bataillon de Marine Personnel Carrier on passera sûrement à un presque double effectifs d'engins en comparaison des AAVP 7 .

ou est-ce la disparition du bataillon de "transport blindé amphibie" qui sera de mise ,et la création d'un bataillon d'un nouveau genre avec une organisation plus proche de la notre (un groupe affecté à un véhicule )  ?

on parle de Armor batallion en parlant des AAVP7 et des LAV 25 .

se Marine Personnel Carrier sera t'il là pour remplacer le LAV aussi ?

j'ai pas mal de question quand même  =)

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  • 3 months later...

Un petit point sur la proposition BAE qui cherche à occuper le terrain médiatique face aux coupes budgétaires et à la pause du programme MPC :

BAE’s ‘Supersized’ Personnel Carrier

by Brendan McGarry on October 11, 2013

BAE Systems Plc is optimistic the U.S. Marine Corps will eventually resume funding for a new wheeled personnel carrier, an executive said.

The question is, when?

To keep folks talking about the program, the company transported a prototype of its 8X8 amphibious wheeled vehicle to the Modern Day Marine expo a few weeks ago in Quantico, Va. Based on the SuperAV made by Italy’s Iveco Defence Vehicles, the 26-ton green machine was hard to miss.

“We supersized the vehicle, as if we took it to the drive-thru at McDonald’s and gave it a few Big Macs,” John Swift, director of the Marine Personnel Carrier program for the U.S. subsidiary of London-based BAE, said in an interview. “Size matters. The greater the mass, the more buoyancy you have. The greater the mass, the more survivable it can be.”

The service has an operational need for about 570 of the so-called Marine Personnel Carriers, or MPCs. Due to budget cuts, though, it was forced to delay the effort and transfer funding to more important programs, including the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV.

“We’re now being told that the funding for next year will be vacated and will be reassigned to ACV,” Swift said. “MPC will go into hiatus for one to six years.”

BAE was one of four companies that received contracts from the service to begin developing and testing prototypes. The others were General Dynamics Corp., based in Falls Church, Va.; Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Md.; and SAIC Inc., based in McLean, Va.

Because the Marine Corps mandated that any designs be based on existing platforms, each of the companies partnered with an international company. BAE teamed with Turin, Italy-based Iveco, which is part of CNH Global N.V., based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Iveco’s SuperAV was almost entirely compatible with the Marine Corps’ program requirements, but needed to be modified to carry bigger troops and withstand stronger blasts, Swift said. BAE’s version of the vehicle costs about $3.5 million, he said.

The redesigned machine can carry a dozen Marines, including three crew members and nine passengers, each standing 6-foot-3-inches tall and weighing about 220 pounds, plus their gear, Swift said. It features a V-shaped hull to deflect bomb blasts and can travel up to 10 nautical miles from a dock landing ship to shore and back, he said.

The vehicle on display had already completed water and shore demonstrations at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Swift said. Two others had successfully undergone blast testing at the Nevada Automotive Test Center, he said.

Whether or when Marine Corps may move forward with the program remains unclear, Swift said. When asked whether some level of funding will be likely restored to keep the program alive, he said, “I am hopeful but not confident.”

http://defensetech.org/2013/10/11/baes-supersized-personnel-carrier/

Et une courte vidéo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXd3PHZJ6pc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Modifié par Serge
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  • 4 months later...

Flotation%20Chambers-l.jpg

  

Ce que l'on voit en vert olive sur les cotés, c'est des espèces de flotteurs ?

Je le trouve pas mal en tout cas.

Pour reprendre la question:

On voit au centre le MPC-SuperAV dans sa configuration amphibie pour la phase d'assaut par la mer. La partie structurelle de la coque est en vert sombre. On la voit bien sur le toit. À cela, les flancs et le ventre du véhicule ont une premier surblindage qui apparaît en vert très claire.

De part et d'autre du véhicule est représenté le module de surblindage complet en vert olive. Celui-ci est monté sur le blindé pour les phases strictement terrestre. La flottabilité du blindé n'est plus prioritaire.

  • Upvote (+1) 1
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Encore un nouvel épisode de Plus belle la vie. Pour reprendre :

L'USMC a depuis longtemps deux besoins complementaires en véhicules blindés. Le premier, l'ACV, suit le programme EFV maintenant abandonné. L'échec de l'EFV tenait au cahier des charges délirant qui a abouti à un blindé hors de prix. Or, le remplacement de l'AAV7-A1 (qui n'est autre que le LVTP7-A1 modernisé des années 70) existe toujours. Le second est le MPC. Ce dernier est une nouveauté. Il cherche un véhicule blindé pour transporter la troupe sous protection.

Avec les réductions budgétaires, les deux programmes ont été stopés puis un effort a été decidé pour assurer l'avancement de l'ACV sur le budget 2015. Sauf que, comme le montre l'article qui suit, l'USMC vient de changer de décision. En fait, c'est le MPC qui est prioritaire. L'ACV devra attendre.

Marines Budget Scramble: Commandant Resurrects MPC, ACV In Limbo

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.on February 17, 2014 at 3:54 PM

Imagine you’re a military supply officer, weary but proud as you watch the train you’ve laboriously loaded with gear roll out of the depot towards the front. And then you realize: You packed the wrong tank. Now you need to get that vehicle off and the right vehicle on — while the train’s already leaving the station.

Stressed yet?

That’s how the Marines must feel right now as they scramble to shift funding in a fiscal 2015 budget request that’s due out March 4. Specifically, they need to reallocate, repurpose, or at least rename funds currently budgeted for their ambitious Amphibious Combat Vehicle, which they’ve had to postpone, and transfer them to a more modest Marine Personnel Carrier designed to meet the service’s immediate needs.

The agony is that the Amphibious Combat Vehicle was, until last month, the Marine Corps’ top-priority program, the holy grail of a 25-year quest to replace slow and vulnerable 1970s-vintage AAV-7 amphibious transports. The irony is that just last year, the Marines effectively killed the Marine Personnel Carrier, explicitly to free up funding for the ACV. Just weeks ago, however, Marine Corps Commandant James Amos decided he had to reverse course, postponing ACV indefinitely while reviving MPC as a quick and partial fix– after the Marines had already submitted their 2015 budget.

Whatever’s in the name, the new vehicle will not be the rose the Marines had long hoped would bloom. It will be something much more limited — but one that is much more achievable. And, as the commandant himself has said, the military is now in an era of “good enough.”

Gen. Amos has spent his entire term making painful choices about the Marine Corps’ top priority: a new, faster, and better-armored amphibious troop transport to carry riflemen from ship to shore and then drive on inland. That’s a mission currently performed by vulnerable 1970s-vintage Amphibious Assault Vehicles called AAV-7s (formerly LVTP-7s), which direly need replacing. But with that replacement, the ACV, on hold, the Marines need to fund something else fast: The Marine Personnel Carrier.

“This decision was made almost the day after the Marines submitted their budget,” one knowledgeable defense official told me, on condition of anonymity because of the “angst inside the Marine Corps” over the matter. “There’s all kinds of things you have to do to restart, [but] the money problem is our biggest issue right now.”

“Both the bureaucracy in the Department and on the Hill appear to be supportive,” he went on. At this late stage, it’s far from easy to “go through all the bureaucracy, the political wickets, to see if we’re capable of shifting this money from ACV into what was MPC.”

That said, “I think you won’t ever see it called MPC,” the source went on. “Instead, “you may hear it called ‘ACV phase 1′” — even though it won’t actually be a fully amphibious Amphibious Combat Vehicle capable of transporting Marines from ship to shore.

The Marines’ first attempt at the replacement was a kind of water-skiing tank called the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. But EFV grew so complex and costly that then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled it in 2011, just months after Amos became commandant. Back then, Amos vowed he’d be driving a new, more modest, and more affordable Amphibious Combat Vehicle (if only in prototype) by the time he finished his term as top Marine — which is later this year.

But Gen. Amos recently reviewed the service’s in-depth studies one last time and decided that budgets were too tight and the technology too immature to develop an ACV that had the desired performance both on water and on land. Instead, he announced a two-phase approach: The service will buy some kind of interim vehicle to supplement the aging AAVs in the near term while it continues development on a future vehicle that combines high water speed with onshore fighting power at an affordable cost.

Now it turns out that phase one will be a revived — and probably renamed — Marine Personnel Carrier.

The Marine Personnel Carrier is not and was never meant to be a substitute for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle. The Marines had in fact originally planned to buy both as complementary vehicles for different missions. In the first wave, a limited number of expensive, fully amphibious vehicles — originally EFVs, then ACVs — would carry a spearhead force from ship to shore and on inland. Later, as reinforcements, a larger number of cheaper Marine Personnel Carriers would arrive to transport troops who didn’t have ACVs. The MPC would need some amphibious capability, but only enough to cross rivers and other water obstacles common in coastal zones, not enough to cross the miles of sea from an amphibious ship to the beach. Instead, the Marine Personnel Carrier would have to be itself carried ashore on some kind of landing craft.

As budgets tightened, however, the Marines decided the fully amphibious ACV had to be their urgent priority and zeroed out the funding for the more limited MPC. After all, they reasoned, there are plenty of armored, wheeled troop transports on sale for reasonable prices from companies around the world: When we finally can spare the cash, we can easily buy one off the shelf.

But the budget kept getting smaller at the same time as the ACV’s technical challenges kept looking bigger. Meanwhile, MPC trials held last summer showed that wheeled armored personnel carriers “have come a long way” in the amount of protection and mobility they can provide, the defense official said. So while the MPC vehicles can’t solve the whole problem, they can solve a big piece of it — and you can buy them now.

In the long term, of course, the Marines still want a way to move swiftly over long distances from ship to shore. That’s what Amos’s Phase 2 is all about. But when and what will it be?

That’s wide open, the defense official told me. In fact, he said, “I’m not so sure that second phase means a high-speed amphibious vehicle” — the goal the Marines have been pursuing since at least 1988.

“A lot of Marine senior leaders [think] we may just have been chasing the wrong vehicle,” he said. That faction is “by no means the majority,” he made clear. But the cancellation of the EFV in 2011 and the indefinite delay of the ACV this year have convinced at least part of the Marine Corps that they’ve gone down a technological and budgetary dead end.

Instead of a single vehicle that both moves at high speed across the surface of the water and fights on land, there’s a new openness to a two-piece solution: say, for example, a troop-carrier optimized to operate on the land, with limited amphibious capability to wade through rivers and surf, and a high-speed watercraft to bring that land vehicle to the beach, or at least close enough to dog-paddle there.

In the meantime, the Marines really want to get going on the new Marine Personnel Carrier. “The ’15 budget is critical to allow [it] to get started,” the official told me. “Even if we started in ’15,” he added, the time to hold a proper competition and evaluation and then start buying in quantity would mean “the Marine Corps doesn’t see operational quantities of those vehicles until fiscal year ’20 or ’21.”

What about the future high-water-speed solution, Amos’s Phase 2? ”Honestly, I couldn’t even begin to figure out the timeline for that,” the official said.

Modifié par Serge
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  • 1 month later...

Cette semaine, l'actu "blindé" est riche chez les américains.

A Sneak Peek At Marines’ New Amphibious Combat Vehicle

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 02, 2014 at 4:05 AM

Marines-charge-ashore-from-AAV-7s-in-Tha

Marines will have to rely on the current Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) to carry them ashore for years to come.

UPDATED 1:35 pm Wednesday with more details from Lt. Gen. Glueck

WASHINGTON: The Marines are about to move out sharply with their once-stalled Amphibious Combat Vehicle, the smallest service’s biggest program. After years of uncertainty and a last-minute change of course that came too late to make it into the administration’s budget request for 2015, the Marines will soon announce their new strategy for something they’re calling an ACV. It will be much more modest than the revolutionary vehicle the Corps once envisioned.

“We are doing well with the ACV,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos said at the Atlantic Council Tuesday afternoon. “We are about to go public with the way forward on it. It’s affordable, ladies and gentlemen, it’s doable, and we can have our cake and eat it too here. So we’re pretty excited about it.”

Amos was short on details at the event and slipped into the elevator a step ahead of pursuing journalists afterwards. But his staff referred me to Manny Pacheco, spokesman for the Marine Corps’s Program Executive Office (PEO) Land Systems. Then, on Wednesday morning, I and two other reporters cornered the Marines’ deputy commandant for “combat development & integration,” Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, after he testified before the Senate Armed Forces subcommittee on seapower, where the general provided additional details.

Between them, they laid out the not-quite-final plan:

■ Buy 200 to 600 armored troop transports as a Phase 1 ACV, which would enter service around 2020 (its “Initial Operational Capability” date or IOC). These will be modified versions of an existing US or foreign design, not an all-new vehicle. They’ll also have only limited amphibious capability: enough to cross a river or coastal inlet, but not necessarily enough to move from a ship at sea to the beach on their own power. They will probably have to be carried on some kind of landing craft, at least to within a few miles of a beach. ACV 1 is essentially a re-envisioned and resurrected Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC), a program which was effectively canceled just last year

■ Upgrade about 390 of the current AAV-7 Amphibious Assault Vehicles. These 1970s-vintage vehicles, descendants of the World War II amtrac, can move from ship to shore on their own power but have proven dangerously vulnerable to roadside bombs. (The MPC prototypes were up to 2.8 times as well-protected as the current AAV-7, according to Marine Corps tests). A contract for the first set of “limited survivability upgrades” will be announced in the next 30 to 60 days, Pacheco told me.

■ Research a future “high water speed” option, an “ACV 2.0,” which may be an all-new and fully amphibious vehicle, a very fast landing craft to carry the ACV 1 — Glueck suggested the current Joint High Speed Vessel as a model — or something entirely different. Said Pacheco, “that’s not a procurement, it’s more in the R&D realm.”

“We were talking to some [congressional] staffers last week and things were changing just as we were talking,” Pacheco told me in a Tuesday evening phone call, “but I’d venture to say we’re pretty close to making some announcement.”

What Pacheco laid out and Glueck elaborated on was the most refined and detailed form I’ve seen so far of the Marines’ new multi-phase, multi-vehicle approach.

The first step has to be making the existing AAV-7 more robust, Pacheco said. That means those “limited survivability upgrades,” such as blast-resistant seats and additional armor, which may require a new transmission to handle the extra weight. But of the 1,062 AAV-7s in service, only about 392 will get the upgrades: That’s enough to carry four Marine infantry battalions, a full brigade, in a single assault wave, Glueck told the Senators. There is no current plan for a fleet-wide overhaul or a service-life extension program (SLEP) for the aging vehicles.

The next step is what the Marines are calling “ACV 1.1.” This will not be an all-new vehicle but rather a “non-developmental item,” that is a modification of an existing US or foreign design. It also probably won’t be able to swim from ship to shore under its own power, instead requiring some kind of landing craft, what Marines prefer to call a “connector.”

“It won’t go from the ship to the shore on its own — at least at this point right now,” Pacheco told me. “I know at least one vendor who claims they’ve deployed their vehicle from the back of an amphib, [but] we have not tested that.”

However, while the four prototypes tested for the MPC program may not be able to launch themselves into the water from an amphibious warship and swim directly ashore, Glueck said they could be loaded about a “connector” vessel that would carry them towards the coast but then drop them off up to five miles offshore to swim the rest of the way by themselves.

“The MPC or ACV 1.1 that we’re talking about here, it has a robust swim capability,” Glueck told reporters after the Wednesday morning hearing. “From all the video that I’ve seen of the different versions, I feel very confident that you could drive it into the water probably in sea state three [i.e modest winds and two-foot-high waves], and it would go ahead and go to the beach.”

What’s more, he said, the five-mile, one-hour swim the ACV 1 could make is about the same distance and duration that the current AAV-7 can handle. The limiting factor is less the technology than what the human passengers can endure before they’re too seasick to fight. “Y’know,” Glueck said, “you lose the John Wayne factor there once you’ve been riding in one of those things with the smell of diesel fumes and everything else after about an hour, rocking and rolling.”

But doesn’t the AAV-7 have the advantage that it can launch directly from the amphibious ship, without the time-consuming bottleneck of loading onto a connector vessel? That makes a difference in current operations, Glueck acknowledged, but the proliferation of long-range anti-ship missiles will force the amphibious ships to stay further out to sea: not five miles from shore, but 25, 50, or even 75 miles — which would take one to three hours for even a high-water-speed vehicle to cross, or an utterly impractical five to 15 hours for the current AAV-7.

In such circumstances, regardless of what kind of amphibious vehicle the Marines are riding in, ”that connector is going to become all important,” Glueck said. “Even if you had a self-deployer” — i.e. an amphibious vehicle that can launch straight from the ship like the current AAV-7 — “you’re still going to have to use a connector to get that vehicle closer to the shore.”

Glueck said his staff has finished 90 percent of the detailed requirements for the ACV 1.1. They’ll probably require a higher standard of swimming capability than the MPC did, but he’s confident all four of the MPC contenders will be able to meet it — but performance in open water will be a big part of the ACV competition.

Glueck expects to get the major decisions made within six months. In budgetary terms, he said, ”you’re looking for about ’17 [seventeen] when you’d actually have to put money on the table to make a selection to have the ability to have a vehicle by 2020.”

If a company can offer an ACV 1 that can swim from ship to shore without a landing craft, that capability would “absolutely” be a major plus, Pacheco said — but it’s not going to be a requirement. That, in turn, is why it’s crucial to keep the AAV-7s viable, since those can self-deploy from the ship, which means they can all head shorewards in a single wave rather than wait to load aboard a limited number of landing craft.

That ACV 1.1 competition would be for about 200 basic troop transports. If that goes well, the Marines will expand the program to an ACV 1.2, buying up to an additional 400 vehicles in multiple variants: not just personnel carriers but also, say, a mobile command post or a fire support vehicle that trades passenger capacity for bigger weapons. Those 600 ACVs of various types would be able to transport six Marine rifle battalions in a single wave.

Meanwhile, research and development will continue on faster means of crossing the water. “That would be ACV 2.0,” said Pacheco. “There’s some things out there that the Marine Corps wants to keep pursuing…. to see what’s in the realm of the possible… to get us to an affordable high-water-speed ACV.” But right now such a vehicle, whatever it might be, looks like an idea for the indefinitely distant future.

Some critics of the Marine Corps have questioned why the service needs this kind of capability at all. The last opposed landing by amphibious armored vehicles came during the Korean War, they argue, and in an era of increasingly long-range anti-ship and anti-tank missiles, even a high-water-speed landing force is unlikely to reach the beach alive. But the Marines see the ability to move from ship to shore and on inland as central to their mission — and not just in major wars.

When 6,000 Marines aboard seven Navy amphibious ships responded to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, Gen. Amos said Tuesday, “there wasn’t one ounce of combat involved.” But the Navy ships couldn’t enter Haiti’s damaged ports — which had been in bad shape even before the quake — and tie up at the pier. Nor could helicopters carry the sheer volume of relief supplies required. Instead, the operation relied on AAV-7s, he said: “all those amphibious tractors that swam ashore and swam back every day and carried fuel, water, medical supplies, people back out to the ships,” Amos said.

In fact, “I think the bulk of [the] forces in my service are what we call general purpose, applicable across the range of military operations” from humanitarian aid to major war, Amos went on. A Navy-Marine amphibious task force is “the Swiss Army Knife of the Department of Defense,” he said, using one of his favorite phrases. (And, by the way, “our United States Navy needs more money for ships,” he added). “If you want to hand out humanitarian supplies or food or rescue people, you bring in an amphibious ship full of marines and sailors,” he said. ” They can also make a forcible entry landing some place [with] the exact same force.”

“The standard-issue United States Marine… is trained as a rifleman first and can hand out water, can hand out diapers,” Amos said, citing recent relief efforts in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan last fall and in Japan after the 2011 earthquake.

Amos’s problem is paying for enough Marines with enough training and enough modern equipment to handle this wide range of missions. “Yes, we can do the same with less, but there’s a price to be paid for that,” he said. For example, the Marines have been raiding equipment and base maintenance funds to pay for training, fuel, spare parts, and other immediate operational needs.

The automatic budget cuts known as sequestration are “forcing us to sacrifice our long-term health for near-term readiness,” Amos said. “I can’t continue to do this for forever.” Around 2017, he said, the next Commandant will probably have to cut back readiness to keep alive programs like the Amphibious Combat Vehicle.

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Marine Corps Scraps Tracks for Amphibious Combat Vehicle

by Bryant Jordan on April 4, 2014

AAV-490x382.jpg

The Marine Corps is walking away from the high-speed Amphibious Combat Vehicle it envisioned – at least for the time being – but Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos said a wheeled version will have to do in this budget environment.

“We elected to switch and go to a wheeled vehicle,” Amos said on April 1 during a House Appropriations Committee hearing. “These are commercial off-the-shelf … they’re already being made by several different manufacturers.”

Unlike the planned ACV, the vehicle the Corps now calls the ACV 1.1 will not be able to deploy quickly from ship to shore from up to 12 miles out and it will not move on treads once landed. But what makes it a sound alternative is that the Corps already has other means to deploy it over water rapidly, Amos said. And the fact it will move on wheels makes it more survivable in a combat theatre.

Following it’s now cancelled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Marine Corps seem to have abandoned efforts to quickly develop an amphibious vehicle that can both swim at what the Corps calls high water speeds of 13 to 15 knots and survive substantial land threats once ashore. Instead, the Corps plans to field a less-ambitious interim vehicle and simultaneously work on research and development aimed at reaching the desired combination of attributes for the future , senior leaders have said.

And then there’s the cost. Amos said the 300 ACV 1.1s he anticipates buying will cost about $3 million to $4.5 million each. The original ACV, the Corps had envisioned, would have cost between $12 million and $14 million each, he said.

“It’s the way to go, and they are highly mobile, and that’s the direction we’re going,” Amos said.

It does not appear that the Corps thinks it is technically feasible or cost-effective to attempt quick delivery of a vehicle that can both swim at faster speeds for ship to shore missions and also function as a sufficiently survivable land vehicle.

The ACV, as initially conceived, would be able to swim to shore from as far out as 12 miles. While the ACV 1.1 will not do that, Amos said the Corps’ fleet of connectors can. These include some 81Landing Craft Air Cushions, or LCACs, that are capable of transporting up to 150,000 pounds and as many as 180 Marines. Powered by four gas-turbine engines and two four-bladed propellers, the LCACs can travel over water, ice, snow, sand and tundra.

Additionally, Amos told lawmakers during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, the Corps has two Joint High Speed Vehicles currently out at sea and another eight under contract.

“Those will go fast, they will haul a lot of Marines and vehicles,” he said. “That gives us the ability to maneuver from a sea base that could be pushed out as far as 100 miles because of an enemy threat.”

“So what we’ve done is we’ve changed the paradigm in the way we thought, in that we have to swim all that way in our amphibious combat vehicle,” he said. “Well, it’s impractical now. Can we get on a connector, and the connector take us in? And the answer is yes.”

Amos still plans for the Corps to get the ACV it originally wanted. That’s now called ACV 1.2.

Amos said he came to the tough decision a few months ago to scrap original plans for the ACV. What made it more difficult is that just two years earlier the Corps called it quits on the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle after spending about 15 years and more than $3 billion in research, development and testing.

Amos has not identified the companies who may compete for the ACV 1.1 contract, though in the past Lockheed, General Dynamics and BAE Systems have done so, according to Manny Pacheco, a spokesman for the Corps’s Program Executive Office Land Systems Equipment Modernization.

Pacheco said an RFI for the ACV 1.1 is still a few months off.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2014/04/04/marine-corps-scraps-tracks-for-amphibious-combat-vehicle/#ixzz2xx8bgzxb

Defense.org

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Si je comprends bien il y a deux crash programs dont un consistant en la rénovation d'une partie du parc d'AAV-7 en l'attente d'un nouveau véhicule moins ambitieux que l'IFV. Si je comprends bien également ce nouveau projet sera à pneumatiques au lieu d'être chenillé ? C'est étrange pour débarquer sur du sable a priori non préparée non ?

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Autant acheté des BvS10 viking non ?...

 

Un question totalement hors sujet, mais puisque cela m'y fait penser...

 

Bon j'allais poser une question mais j'ai trouvé la réponse finalement :lol:

 

Je ne savais pas que les pompiers avaient des Bv 206, l'autre fois en passant devant la caserne de La Teste (prés d'Arcachon) j'en ai vu un sur camion.

Ma question devait être "de quel engin s'agissait-il" mais bon vu que j'ai trouvé ça, il n'y avait plus beaucoup de doute étant donné qu'il doit s'agir exactement du même véhicule :

 

99bddaca6a.jpg

 

3c1ebb15ee.jpg

 

Il y en a en Gironde et en Rhône-Alpes si je ne me trompe pas.

Enfin voila c'était pour faire partager mon ignorance sur le sujet avec d'autres qui l'ignoreraient aussi, puis vu que j'avais déjà commencer mon poste... :lol:

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À propos des programmes de blindés américains en genéral :

US Army, Marines struggle with infantry vehicle replacements

Apr. 6, 2014 - 01:33PM | By PAUL MCLEARY

bilde?Site=M5&Date=20140406&Category=DEF

An amphibious assault vehicle maneuvers during an amphibious assault exercise off the coast of Del Mar Beach at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. (US Marine Corps)

WASHINGTON — Lessons learned. Tradeoffs. Taking advantage of previous investments. The need for further study.

If there’s one thing the US Army and Marine Corps share, it’s a host of well-worn phrases trotted out at congressional oversight hearings to explain why their latest attempts to build a new combat vehicle will be different from previous failures.

In the midst of fighting two wars, the two services poured billions of dollars into developing, then scrapping, expensive next-generation vehicles. But they both promise the investments haven’t been wasted and that, this time, they have truly learned from the mistakes of the past.

The Marines spent years developing an amphibious ship-to-shore connector program to ferry grunts to the beach, which they eventually dubbed the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), spending $3 billion on the effort before sinking the massive vehicle due to its ballooning requirements and estimate of budget-devouring sustainment costs in the future.

Likewise, the Army has spent well over $1 billion since 2010 on its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program in handing out development contracts to General Dynamics and BAE Systems, along with a costly, months-long analysis of alternatives program, in an effort to develop the successor to the Bradley fighting vehicle.

The Army's Vehicle Efforts

The GCV was the latest flameout in a program that actually harkens back to 1999, when then-Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki kicked off the ill-starred Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. It envisioned a family of Manned Ground Vehicles to replace the Bradley, the M1 Abrams tank and the M113 tracked infantry carrier.

Fifteen years later, the Bradley and Abrams are in line for hundreds of millions’ worth of upgrades to remain operational for years — and decades — to come. And BAE and General Dynamics are fighting it out to win the contract for the Amphibious Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV), the M113 replacement.

FCS was, of course, canceled in 2009 after a $20 billion investment, and the Manned Ground Vehicles alone had been funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, with more than $300 million in cancellation fees alone.

Despite the GCV’s cancellation in February due to budget pressures and the inability of the Army to keep its weight at a reasonable level while meeting its size, weight and power requirements, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno insisted in a January speech that “I was very pleased with the progress of the Ground Combat Vehicle. I think we have the requirements right. We’re starting to see really good development by the contractors involved with this, so it’s important that we carry that forward, so we’re trying to figure out how to carry that forward.”

Contractors BAE and General Dynamics will each receive about $50 million, according to the fiscal 2015 budget request, to continue development. But they say the Army has yet to explain to them what that development program might look like.

“We have had an ongoing exchange on our thoughts on a follow-on program, but at this point, we haven’t sat down and had anything more than an informal discussion” with the Army, said Mark Signorelli, general manager of combat vehicles at BAE Systems.

That follow-on program, one source said, is being dubbed the Future Fighting Vehicle.

But any future program wouldn’t be production-ready before at least one more round of upgrades and modernization takes place on the Bradley, which is hundreds of millions of dollars on top of whatever the future vehicle program might cost.

So after 15 years and billions in development costs, the Bradley rolls on.

Marines Moving Out

As part of the $2.5 billion Marine Corps unfunded priorities list submitted to Congress last week, the Corps asked for $74 million for equipment modernization, along with $294 million in aviation readiness and $1.4 billion in aviation modernization money over and above the 2015 base budget request.

But one thing was missing from the list: funding for the program that will eventually — and finally — replace its 40-year-old Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) with a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV).

After the EFV’s cancellation, the Corps followed an unsteady path by announcing upgrades to the AAV and the Marine Personnel Carrier, which itself was mostly defunded in fiscal 2014.

But now there’s a new plan: upgrade about 400 of the 1,000 AAVs while buying several hundred ACVs starting around 2020. A solicitation for that program is expected this spring.

“We have indeed captured the lessons learned both with the AAV and the EFV to make sure that the mistakes that were made are not repeated,” the Corps’ assistant commandant, Gen. John Paxton, assured the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 2 in a familiar refrain.

Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, commanding general of the Corps’ Combat Development Command, called the AAV “the Marine Corps’ number one priority” at the same hearing. He told the panel the modernized AAVs would be “a bridge” to the new ACV, while giving the Corps four battalions’ worth of lift from ship to shore for crisis response forces.

The problem is, however, the new vehicles are not necessarily being designed to kick down the door in the first wave of an amphibious assault. Due to the increasing range and lethality of standoff weapons developed by near-peer competitors and some non-state groups, the Corps’ new operating concept leaked last week concedes these weapons “necessitate standoff range greater than previously considered.”

While the generals only touched on these issues in their testimony, it’s a thorny problem that sent the EFV to the bottom.

In the Corps’ new Expeditionary Force 21 document, service leaders reinforce everything the Corps has been saying over the past several years: The service must become faster, more responsive, and again act as the nation’s expeditionary force in readiness.

But the standoff threat from shore means that under the Corps’ new plan, the beaches will likely have to be gained by other means as the new AAVs will be forced to take some risk in protection, in order to meet the other requirements.

“Once landing sites are controlled,” the paper states, “amphibious ships may close to facilitate speed of build-up ashore. The discharge point for Amphibious Assault Vehicles and other surface connectors may be closer to shore, but generally will remain beyond 12” nautical miles.

The Corps is currently moving out with new special-purpose Marine air-ground task force units that can respond quickly using MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. But Marine leaders are working to ensure they can respond through the surf as well. Just when, and in what vehicle, is still in question. ■

Email: pmcleary@defensenews.com.

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Si je comprends bien, il y a deux crash programs dont un consistant en la rénovation d'une partie du parc d'AAV-7 en l'attente d'un nouveau véhicule moins ambitieux que l'IFV. Si je comprends bien également ce nouveau projet sera à pneumatiques au lieu d'être chenillé ? C'est étrange pour débarquer sur du sable a priori non préparée non ?

Pour reprendre l'historique des programmes de blindés amphibies :

L'US Marine Corps est une force légère d'assaut amphibie. Son infanterie ne possède pas en propre moyens de déplacement. Elle est déployée par des unités d'assaut amphibie blindées montées sur AAV7-A1. Sinon, le reste du temps, le Marine est à pieds, en camion ou hélicoptère.

Depuis 15 ans, l'US Marine Corps travaille sur le successeur de l'AAV7-A1. C'était l'AAAV, devenu EFV en 2003. Celui-ci, grâce à une coque planante, devait permettre aux éléments d'assaut d'être lancés à plus de 12 miles des côtes pour garder les bateaux à l'abri des missiles côtiers. Les AAV7-A1 ne peuvent l'être à plus de 5 miles.

Le coût de l'EFV est devenu prohibitif tellement il est complexe. Pour donner une idee, on prend n'importe quelle fonction et c'est du +400% d'amélioration par rapport à l'AAV7-A1 (protection : + 400%, puissance de feu : + 400%). Il fut abandonné en 2011.

En parallèle, l'US Marine Corps connait une révolution : ils veulent un véhicule blindé à roues pour combattre dans les terres. Travailler en camion, ça a des limites. C'est le programme MPC. Comme l'USMC est une force amphibie, le MPC doit l'être. Il doit surtout être disponible sur étagère (SuperAV, AMV, Terrex et Piranha.) et n'a pas besoin d'être un hors bord comme l'EFV. C'est un véhicule de combat terrestre, non d'assaut amphibie.

L'idée est la suivante : une première vague d'EFV était lancée à plus de 12 miles pour sécuriser les plages et une seconde vague de MPC était débarquée par LCAC pour s'enfoncer dans les terres. Le nombre de MPC et EFV devait être proche de celui des AAV7-A1.

Il faut noter que l'US Marine Corps a des blindés 8x8, les LAV (des Piranha-II). Et on n'a pas d'info sur le possible lien entre les LAV et le MPC.

Avec l'EFV annulé en 2011, ils se retrouvent sans rien en remplacement et lancent l'ACV dont personne ne comprend les particularités. En effet, il doit être moins cher que l'EFV, plus simple mais doit permettre de lancer des assauts à 12 miles. Sa priorité est la vitesse sur l'eau quit à diminuer les autres caractéristiques dont le nombre de soldats portés (17).

Avec les coupes budgétaires du séquestre, le MPC est annulé pour preserver l'ACV. En fait, il est tellement compliqué que l'USMC vient de se rendre compte qu'il ne serait pas en dotation demain. Or, l'AAV7 date de 1971.

Ces derniers jours, une décision enfin cohérente émerge :

l'USMC assume que ce qu'elle réclame pour l'aprés AAV7 risque de prendre du temps. Ils avancent donc sur ce qui est certain même si la doctrine des assauts à 12 miles en prends un coups. Ce qui compte, c'est ce qui est faisable, non la doctrine.

Ils regroupent tous leurs programmes de blindés de combat sous un unique nom (suite à un problème administratif de programmation budgétaire loupée, ils ne peuvent pas employer MPC), ACV. Cela donne :

- l'ACV 1.1 : un blindé à roues qui peut être lancé à 5 miles par mer de niveau 3. Il ne doit pas faire plus que l'AAV et transporte 9 hommes débarquant en 17". 300 seraient achetés.

- l'ACV 1.2 : c'est l'aprés AAV7. Un chenillé capable d'être lancé à 12 miles des côtes. Il ne serait pas disponible avant longtemps.

Pour faire la rustine avec l'ACV-1.2, 400 AAV7-A1 sur les 1000 seraient modernisés pour permettre l'assaut à 3 bataillons.

En fait, l'US Marine Corps ne reconnaît pas encore officiellement qu'il est peut être impossible de fabriquer un blindé chenillé capable de naviguer sur plus de 12 miles en gardant la troupe fraîches et suffisamment blindé pour résister au premier tir un fois au sol. Pour le moment, c'est impossible.

Il se peut que ce genre de blindé soit même une utopie.

Modifié par Serge
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