New amphibious combat vehicles (ACVs) are almost ready to be deployed for the U.S. Marine Corps, according to the service’s second-in-command.
Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps General Chris Mahoney told reporters at a briefing Thursday that the ACVs will be deployed with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in the coming months. The eight-wheeled armored vehicles are set to replace the service’s amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs), which were first produced over 50 years ago, in 1972.
Mahoney said that the new ACVs have conducted operations in protected waters and that the Marine Corps has “very detailed checklists, criteria to get that platform back into unprotected waters.”
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“There are a couple of more things to go but I’m confident that we will get the training, get the procedures and the methods to the level that we need to be confident in rough sea states,” Mahoney added while answering a question from the U.S. Navy Institute (USNI) News.
According to Military.com, ACVs can travel up to 20 mph faster on land than AAVs and offer up to three times more in protection capability. USNI News describes the new landing craft as the Marine Corps’ “next-generation vehicle” that can move Marines “from ship to shore.”
There are currently four variations of the ACV planned: a personnel variant, command and control variant, recovery variant, and a 30-mm gun variant. USNI News reported that the vehicles will be deployed on the USS Boxer and USS Harpers Ferry—two amphibious warships stationed in the Pacific Ocean—once ACV training finishes.
The Marine Corps’ ACV program has been marked by several mishaps, including last month when Sergeant Matthew Kylski, an ACV crewman and part of the 15th MEU, was killed on December 12 after his vehicle rolled over during ground training at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California. According to a release from the service, 14 other crew members were on the ACV during the accident and taken to local hospitals.
The Marines temporarily paused operations on the ACVs in October 2022, after one of the vehicles rolled over in the surf during training offshore, also near Camp Pendleton, according to a report by the Associated Press. The three crew members were not injured, and the Marines said that the rollover was due to a “mechanical malfunction.”
Open-water operations of the ACVs were also temporarily halted in July 2022, after a high-surf incident that resulted in one vehicle rollover and the other becoming disabled during training. No crew members were reported injured in either incident at the time, according to USNI News.
Newsweek reached out to the Marines’ communications office via email for more information Thursday.
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