Military of China, force comment.
Military of China, force comment.

EFV expeditionary fighting vehicle despite excellent speed performance but relatively poor protection

newspaper freelance writer Rosenberg

According to “USA Today” newspaper Web site reported on May 5, U.S. Navy Marines open 4 to $ 13 billion worth of expeditionary fighting vehicle (EFV) program in the hope that the next weapon to attract more support for landing operations. Although the project cost and reliability problems due to delays in the military or want to purchase at least 600 new tanks in 2015 in service.

expeditionary fighting vehicle is the U.S. military “over the horizon,” the concept of landing an important part of the concept proposed in the 1980s, one of the core idea is to detect the enemy from outside the coastal garrison (usually 30 to 50 kilometers), will be hidden from the landing ship tank removed, and then launched a surprise attack. The other hand, need to be near the coast to the traditional landing, because of anti-ship missile defense side has become increasingly widespread use of dangerous.

to the early 21st century, to achieve “from sea to land,” the strategic thinking of U.S. Marines launched a further covering air, land, sea reform. In the air, plans to use to fly faster, farther MV-22 “Osprey” tiltrotor aircraft to replace an ordinary helicopter; the sea and on land, sea-crossing tend to develop faster, better ground mobility, firepower and greater survivability and command and control functions with a new amphibious platform, EFV was born.

expeditionary combat weight 34.5 t, length 9.33 m, width 3.66 m, 3.28 m high, priced $ 22 million, can carry 17 Marines. This monster is very flexible and its surface speed of up to 25 (about 46.3 km/h), in 320 km from the coast within the cruise, which will help to find gaps in enemy defenses. As the car’s life is far from over, landing fleet can hide outside the control of the enemy missile has a range war, EFV itself with superior firepower and force protection, to guide the flow of command, to the inland launch assault.

However, this radiant new-concept weapons are still shortcomings. Meifang Zhang Gates questioned the plan. Last year, Gates has stopped the Army a new car project on the grounds that it roadside bomb (IED) lack of adequate protection. Defense spending in a tight environment, the growing threat of roadside bombs, so expeditionary fighting vehicle is also facing a similar predicament.

According to U.S. official data, since 2001, Congress approved a total of 160 billion dollars to deal with IED. As powerful IED, very hard to detect, only specially designed MRAP vehicles (MRAP) to the bomb clouds moving on the road. The body of such vehicle off the ground at least 30 inches (1 inch combined 25.4 mm), and the installation of V-type explosion-proof chassis. And expeditionary combat vehicles to 16 inches away from the body, anti-bomb capacity is clearly insufficient. Coupled with the likelihood of large-scale landing operations is not high, it is difficult to deal with IED’s expeditionary combat vehicles being questioned as no surprise.

HD Photo: U.S. EFV Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle realize the water slide