Zitat:In theory the Force Design 2030 transformation would allow a small company of about 100 Marines to be positioned on islands in order to pose an outsized threat to nearby enemy naval forces. The plan seeks to force the enemy to divert their troops and resources to counter this small element of US Marines. For an attacking military like China they would want to create an economy of effort. What that means is they would aim to avoid dispersing their forces and resources across a wide area. In military theory there is a concept called “massing forces” to bring overwhelming force to bear on a specific target and that's what China would seek to do.

But Force Design 2030 aims to make the PLA spread out and unfocused. The Marines want to become experts at sea denial. Instead of being a multitool jack of all trades they want to be the go to Anti-access/area denial forces in the south china sea. Every marine would still be a rifleman as we all know, but under this new plan they would also be a kind of island survivalist.

The Marines had about 451 tanks in their inventory which were the old M1A1 variant that lacked a lot of the more modern survivability capabilities that tanks require against a near peer today. They would have been pretty much forced into an expensive and time consuming upgrade process. To get a picture of just how expensive this process would be, when the Army upgraded 174 M1A1s to the M1A2 SEPv3 it cost them $714 million dollars, and another upgrade program for 786 tanks cost a whopping $2.6 billion dollars. Projecting those numbers out, it would have cost the Corps between $1.5 and $1.85 billion dollars to upgrade their entire inventory just to the M1A2 SEPv3 standard, while future versions would be even more expensive.

(08.02.2024, 23:10)Quintus Fabius schrieb: Der Aspekt, dass die Panzer der Marines zunehmend veraltet waren und die Kosten für eine vollständige Modernisierung auf den neuesten Stand zu hoch ist ein Umstand der bisher in der ganzen Diskussion dazu zu wenig Beachtung gefunden hat. Dafür kann man natürlich eine Menge andere neue Systeme rüsten.

Zitat:Marine Corps Begins Water Testing for Future Landing Ship Concept

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – Gears grinded as offshore supply vessel Resolution folded its long stern ramp on Friday and prepared to head into the Pacific for an afternoon session with a group of Marines and their drones.

The 254-foot Resolution, under contract with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, pulled into Camp Pendleton’s Del Mar boat basin on Thursday to begin a series of experiments that the Marine Corps expects will help shape operational concepts and design for the Navy’s Landing Ship Medium. Resolution will also join the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 3 experimentation that’s underway with the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity at Camp Pendleton. The offshore support vessel is a stern landing vessel that’s a prototype for the future LSM, officials said, and it’s one of three planned contracted OSVs that will shape those decisions for the LSM as a platform in a contested logistics environment. [...]

Resolution is one of three OSVs the service wants to get to help round out its Force Design concepts, LSM design and tactics, techniques and procedures for how the Marine Littoral Regiments will use the ships. It also will support other MCWL experimentation, including testing with the Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aerial System, or TRUAS, a 150-pound drone-like unmanned aircraft. [...]

The modifications added a 115-foot-long ramp, four landing pylons and two “strong backs” towers to the ship that support the ramp, said Ray Butler, a contractor and member of the Demonstration Assistance Team based at Indian Head, Md. The four thick, round pylons or “landing spuds” lower onto the coastal seafloor to provide stability for the ramp when it’s lowered onto a beach or coastal wall or rocks. Twin towers – one each at aft starboard and port – control the ramp and its cable system. The ramp is built in several sections – at 42 feet, 24 feet, and 44 feet wide each – that extend out and fold up. The end ramp section, or “flutters,” has four separate decks that can lift up or down to 14 degrees, enabling more stable loading onto an uneven beach or coastal terrain or quay wall, Butler said. [...] “The concept is wherever the Marines are at. The Marines come aboard, they do the tactical mission they need to do, they get off the ship and the ship goes back to pick up another unit or do another mission,” Butler said.

Zitat:BAE Systems to build 34 more ACVs for USMC

The awarding of the firm-fixed-price modification for Amphibious Combat Vehicles production to a previously awarded contract sees the programme value reach in excess of $2.7bn. [...]

Work on the 34 FRP ACVs, which will be manufactured in the personnel variant, will be completed by July 2026, according to a contract notice published by the US Department of Defense (DoD). Including the news contract modification, the total cumulative face value of the programme is in excess of $2.7bn. The ACV programme was initiated by the USMC in 2011 to replace its amphibious assault vehicles (AAV) family, which entered service in 1972. The 8×8 wheeled ACV has been designed and manufactured by BAE Systems in the US, in collaboration with Italy-based Iveco Defence Vehicles. [...]

The USMC approved the ACV’s initial operational capability in November 2020, with the vehicle designed to accommodate three crew members and 13 dismounted troops.