Conway Sticks With EFV, Or Similar

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Even if the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle made by General Dynamics is killed, departing Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway says the country will need the same sort of capability and will end up buying it.

"It's my believe if that program was canceled outright we would still go with another weapon systemn like EFV," he said this morning at what may well be his final Pentagon press conference.

The EFV is no longer on life support in terms of its program performance, according to Marine sources, but GD's efforts to bring it back from near coma status may well be too little too late. It will be interesting once the budget comes out in February to see if Conway was offering us hints that EFV will be killed or reduced to a research and development program pending a new effort.

Conway repeated his mantra that if the Marines are going to storm ashore from "over the horizon" then they need something fast, amphibious and armored. Navy Undersecretary Bob Work didn't exactly endorse EFV when he spoke about the Marines' future recently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The EFV is a “tremendous machine,” he said, but it is “very expensive.” Its future, along with the future of all Marine platforms, is under scrutiny and will be decided during ongoing “affordability discussions.” We betcha!

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