The U.S. Army will not rule out any option for its new ground combat vehicle (GCV) program, including wheeled and tracked variants, which could possibly lead to the service examining the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV).

The Marines have been an integral part of the Army task force on ground vehicles since the beginning, said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, or ARCIC. "We are very close in talking about capabilities and [which of those] are necessary for the GCV," he said.

On Oct. 5, the Army submitted its Initial Capabilities Document to the joint staff, with five primary requirements for its new vehicle program: force protection, mobility, lethality, survivability and the network. The mobility piece could point to the possibility of using EFV as an Army combat vehicle.

Above a certain weight, mobility is hampered, no matter how nimble the wheeled vehicle is, Vane said. "There will be a weight inflection point that will then require a tracked vehicle." The Army is looking at multiple variants of a GCV, he added. "Some could be tracked, some could be wheeled."

When it comes to networking and upgrading the increasing number of both wheeled and tracked vehicle platforms in the Army's arsenal, Vane said that while some of the legacy systems can be upgraded, in some cases "it probably would make more sense to go to a new vehicle" instead of upgrading platforms like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Upgrading the Bradley "appears to be fairly costly," he said, "and might still only give us a Bradley in the end," though he was quick to point out that more analysis must be done on the cost/benefit side.

Vane also noted that both the Army and Marines have a forcible entry requirement. "If the EFV can compete, bring it on," he said.

Manny Pacheco, public affairs officer for the Marines' EFV program, demurred, saying only that every option for the GCV is "on the table."

In a recent visit to General Dynamics' EFV manufacturing plant in Lima, Ohio, Gen. James Conway, Marine Corps Commandant, pitched the vehicle for multi-use. "We're always looking to see what the EFV can give us the capacity to do," he said. "We're not going to spend this kind of money on a vehicle and think it has a single-dimension capacity."

Photo: USMC