By DAVE RESS | The Daily Press | Published: April 18, 2021 NORFOLK, Va. (Tribune News Service) Climbing onto a 36-foot inflatable boat to be lowered 40 feet from the deck of USS San Antonio onto the Atlantic is just part of the day’s work for sailors with the Norfolk-based USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group. “We do this every day,” said Capt. Darren Nelson, the group’s commodore, in a phone interview from the seas south of Ireland. It’s an exercise to make sure that high-risk search and rescue missions on the high seas don’t go awry, he said. It’s also how the group’s sailors, as well as the Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit who deployed with them three weeks ago, get to other ships when they need to board, inspect and if necessary, seize illegal weapons.
‘We are ready to respond to anything’: At sea, Iwo Jima group’s sailors and Marines have lots of missions Dave Ress, The Daily Press
Climbing onto a 36-foot inflatable boat to be lowered 40 feet from the deck of USS San Antonio onto the Atlantic is just part of the day’s work for sailors with the Norfolk-based USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group.
“We do this every day,” said Capt. Darren Nelson, the group’s commodore, in a phone interview from the seas south of Ireland.
It’s an exercise to make sure that high-risk search and rescue missions on the high seas don’t go awry, he said.
Nimitz-class carriers early but keep building the more capable
Ford-class carriers.
The Marine Corps says it wants to retire “tired iron” – early-model F-18 fighters – as quickly as possible and buy F-35s.
The M2 Bradley has been repeatedly upgraded since its introduction, but after 40 years in service, the vehicle is reaching its limits.
The Army wants to replace its Bradley combat vehicle with another, modernized troop carrier, albeit a potentially self-driving one, the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. Similarly, it wants to replace its Apache attack helicopters with a futuristic attack reconnaissance aircraft.
The strategists’ definition: old
kinds of systems. Many strategists say that all these approaches are wrong, mired in “old think” and ignoring new ways of warfare. These strategists focus on the demands of great power conflict, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. They envision such a conflict employing a radically different set of operational concepts
These may be around for decades to come.
Oshkosh Defense has now built 10,000 of its Joint Light Tactical Vehicles for the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and a growing sphere of international partners, hitting a milestone which may only be but a beginning to a decades-long developmental, production, and delivery trajectory.
The vehicle, originally envisioned as a hybrid combination between a high-speed, mobile, off-road vehicle and a heavily protected IED-stopping armored platform, has evolved into a complex, yet balanced mixture of the two. It is now used by as many as seven U.S. allied countries, to include the UK, Belgium, Montenegro, Slovenia, Lithuania, Brazil, and North Macedonia. More than 6,000 have already been fielded.
Testing last summer revealed serious deficiencies with the ACV.
Marines tested the Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle from June to September of last year and the ACV didn’t get rave reviews. The ACV was put through its paces, traveling from ship to shore through the surf zone, conducting live fire drills, and maneuvers with the Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and Light Armored Vehicles. Here’s where it fell short.
Amphibious Combat Vehicle
The ACV, designed by BAE Systems, replaces the Marine Corps’ Assault Amphibious Vehicle, an amphibious ship to shore transport vehicle that has been in service with the USMC since the 1970s. The large tracked vehicle can carry twenty-one fully-armed Marines plus three crew members and is armed with a remote weapon station turret that carries both a .50 caliber heavy machine gun as well as a 40mm grenade launcher. Though certainly a capable platform when it made its service debut, it has grown long in the tooth after nearly a half century