EFV dell' USMC

[wingrove]

Si sta concludendo l'accettazione dell'EFV (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle) da parte dell'US Marine Corps, mezzo che è stato presentato già 2 anni fa in Future Weapons (CERCA l'ho usato).

La straordinaria, come l'hanno definita i Marine, capacità dell'EFV è quella di svolgere tutti i compiti richiesti ad un mezzo da assalto anfibio e quello di un semplice IFV come il nostro freccia.

E' in grado di trasportare 17 soldati equipaggiati più 3 piloti, e con un raggio d'azione molto più grande di quello dell'AAV.

Si può condurre un'intera operazione d'assalto partendo da 25 miglia dalla costa e avendo ancora carburante sufficiente per condurre operazioni sulla terraferma.

La velocità in acqua è uno dei suoi punti di forza: 20 nodi la velocità di crociera, ottenuta grazie ad un motore da 875 cv per le operazioni a terra che lo spingono a 70 km/h di massima, e dallo stesso motore più un turbocompressore che fa triplicare tale potenza per muovere più rapidamente possibile le sue 38 tonnellate.

E' armato di un cannone da 30 mm da 200 colpi/min e da una mitragliatrice brandeggiabile da 7.62mm.

Può condurre operazioni in mare e su terra in modalità diurna e notturna.

 

La straordinaria velocità in mare è frutto di diversi fattori: non solo da un motore che può sfruttare 2000cv ma anche dalla capacità di trasformazione che ha il cingolato.

I cingoli vengono ritirati su e il doppio fondo sullo scafo si apre andandoli a coprire garantendo un fondo assolutamente piatto.

L'EFV, inoltre non fende le onde ma vi scivola sopra potendo disporre di uno "scudo" che a terra fornisce un'ulteriore protezione ed in acqua viene utilizzato come surf.

Tutto ciò lo trovo strabiliante vedremo se entrerà in servizio, perchè il programma ha suscitato qualche polemica dopo l'iniziale euforia.

 

 

 

 

 

[CHAFFEE79]

se non ricordo male anche qua i costi stavano salendo e di tanto.

 

p.s. non andrebbe in marina questa discussione?

Modificato 1 Marzo 2009 da CHAFFEE79

[vorthex]

no. è un mezzo corazzato, non una nave

 

in ogni caso si, i costi salgono ed anche i problemi di qualificazione, visto l'innovazione del mezzo in se. tuttavia, dubito che verrà accontanato, visto che gli AAV-7A1 ormai sono alla frutta.

[Ospite intruder]

Tutt'al più sarà ritardata l'entrata in servizio, anche se, mi pare di ricordare si dicesse che era indispensabile il Crusader perché il Paladins erano alla fine della loro vita operativa... così scriveva RID qualche anno fa, almeno, se ritrovo il numero ti dico anche quando, ma non ha importanza. Del Comanche pure si diceva che era indispensabile, e si potrebbe continuare praticamente con tutto l'elenco di quello cancellato negli ultimi quarantanni dal Pentagono per una ragione o l'altra.

[vorthex]

si ma mentre il comanche ed il cursader sono mezzi che negli scenari odierni servono a ben poco, lo EFV ha ancora un ruolo chiave.

[Dominus]

Ma non c'era già un topic?

[wingrove]

(CERCA l'ho usato).

 

si è accennato ai mezzi anfibi nella discussione sugli LCAC e i traghetti da sbarco francesi...

[CHAFFEE79]

sara pure un corazzato come dici te vorthy, pero i marines li vedo piu nelle discussioni della marina.

 

Su rid di due o tre mesi fa c'era un trafiletto.

[madmike]

L'EFV sta subendo fortissimi ritardi, dovuti a tutta una serie di problematiche di tipo tecnico, e anche ad alcuni ripensamenti dello USMC riguardo alle possibilità del mezzo riferito alle attuali strategie e necessita'.

 

Il mezzo entrera' in servizio, a pieno ritmo, nel 2011-2020 (vds http://www.efv.usmc.mil/highlights_text.asp), ma gia' si aprono scenari poco simpatici sulla, ulteriore, necessita' di modifiche (ad es, il mezzo ha fondo piatto per esaltare le capacita' di navigazione ad alta velocita', requisito essenziale, ma ora ci si chiede se non e' meglio avere un fondo a V più o meno accentuato per la protezione dalle mine... cosa che ovviamente fa a pugni col primo requisito), cosa che sposterebbe ancora in avanti le consegne (ricordo che il contratto con General Dynamics e' stato firmato nel 1990.... sono tempi oramai da Dardo, pardon VCC80, o Freccia...)

 

Si vedra'.

[enrr]

Un articolo interessante sull'EFV da defencenews, di fatto per il costo elevato hanno ridotto a metà il numero di mezzi da ordinare e la versione finale non sarà stabilita prima del 2014

 

USMC To Build 7 New EFV Prototypes

 

Published: 9 Oct 19:01 EDT (23:01 GMT)

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The U.S. Marine Corps in January will begin building seven prototypes of its redesigned Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), an amphibious 38-ton armored infantry carrier designed to swim ashore from 25 nautical miles out at sea, Corps officials said.

 

The new EFVs will have rewired electronics, a rebuilt gun turret and added trim tabs to stabilize it in water. They will be built at the U.S. military's joint tank manufacturing facility in Lima, Ohio, and come off the assembly line in early 2010, said Dave Branham, a spokesman for Marine Corps Program Executive Office Land Systems.

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* Americas

 

"The EFV is a program that has rebounded. The EFV is poised to deliver this capability to the Marine Corps in about four-and-a-half years," Branham said.

 

The program has been plagued by reliability problems, production delays that pushed full-rate production out to 2025, and cost overruns that caused a Nunn-McCurdy breach.

 

Over the last year and a half, the Marine Corps studied the reliability problems of the EFV and developed a number of design changes.

 

The Marines and General Dynamics signed the System Design and Development II contract for the new prototypes in August, said Dan Keating, a combat systems specialist with General Dynamics.

 

"We hope to shake out the final design for LRIP [low-rate initial production]," slated to begin in 2014, said Marine Corps Maj. William O'Brien, an EFV program officer.

 

The Marines have $316 million slated for EFV research and development work in 2009. They plan to buy 573 EFVs, according to the Corps' tactical wheeled vehicle strategy.

 

Among the changes:

 

* Wiring that better resists salt water.

 

"It was mainly cabling issues that have been dealt with to help keep water intrusion out. Corrosion on any vessel is always a problem," O'Brien said.

 

* Strengthening the Mk 44 airburst gun turret. "We recognized last year that the gun turret system was having an inability for ammunition to make it through the feed mechanism without binding," Branham said.

 

"The binding was caused by the weight of the turret on a platform below," he said. "That platform below was not robust enough to support that heavy turret. That was shored up and in doing so, that resolved that binding feed mechanism issue."

 

* Adding trim tabs to make the EFV more stable on the water. "Some trim tabs were installed on the back of the vehicle - very akin to trim tabs on a boat or ship platform. The idea is to get the EFV up on plane, have it stay on plane and adhere to a certain angle of attack," Branham said."

 

The EFV's propulsion system includes 22-inch Honeywell water jets that spew 100,000 gallons of water per minute.

 

"Once the vehicle is put into the water, it can steam ashore at 40 knots and hit the beach and go inland an additional 28 miles before being refueled," Branham said. "The vehicle can be delivered to the sea base from a San Antonio-class vessel, or an LPD 17. There is no vehicle like this in the world."

 

Once the first prototype is built, the Corps plans to begin reliability testing.

 

"The idea is to rapidly assess reliability. We believe the reliability will be very high," Branham said.

 

Program officials said the EFV will bring a much-needed capability to the Corps.

 

"The Marine Corps is relying on this to be the third leg in the Marine Corps' triad and provide heavy-lift capability for infantry Marines from ship to shore," O'Brien said. "What we have now is a 1970s hull. We are excited to get this out there because it is more maneuverable and more lethal than the current vehicles we're using." *

[enrr]

Dicesi economico un anfibio dal costo di 25 e rotti milioni al pezzo...

 

EFV Redesign Makes Tracks

 

Mar 6, 2009

 

By Bettina H. Chavanne

 

The U.S. Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) negotiated its latest hurdle, a Critical Design Review (CDR), in December with relative ease, clearing the way for the first hull to roll off the assembly line as a prototype in May 2010.

 

The CDR was what EFV Program Manager Col. Keith Moore calls “the last off-ramp” since the program emerged from its Nunn-McCurdy law violation and subsequent recertification in 2007. An Overarching Integrated Product Team gave its blessing for the program to move forward without another review of the CDR results.

 

Nevertheless, the Marines (and prime contractor General Dynamics) face plenty of critics. The EFV failed its first System Design and Development evaluation, requiring a redesign and an eight-year program delay. A December Congressional Research Service report, moreover, cites stunning figures: What started out as 1,025 EFVs for $8.5 billion could wind up as $13.2 billion for a little more than half as many vehicles.

 

A critique from Dakota Wood of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) suggests the Marines dump the EFV in favor of two separate platforms. “It seems that the investment in producing a vehicle that solved the ship-to-shore closure challenge has been overcome by advances in land- and sea-based weapons development,” he writes.

 

“People are raising their eyebrows on EFV,” says Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., president of the CSBA. “Because of the growing threat, the fleet is moving farther from shore, [so the EFV] has to swim farther.” And, he adds, “It’s relatively vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs).”

 

The biggest issue facing the Marines in the last round of reviews was whether the vehicle could satisfy the reliability key performance parameter. The EFV prototypes, built in 2003-04, have the equivalent of 25 years of use on them, but were useful for testing component-level reliability issues. “We backfit [new designs] on the old vehicles so we could get an indication of whether the fixes and redesigns were going to do what they were intended to do,” Moore says.

 

General Dynamics and the Marines also addressed the laundry list of problems revealed in the 2006 operational assessment, including criticism that the vehicle won’t withstand an IED blast.

 

“The thing we have going for us is we’re pretty heavy,” Moore says. “The heavier you are, the easier it is to deal with IEDs.”

 

Engineering studies uncovered that for the level of V-hull that could be retrofitted on the EFV, “you could get as good or better protection by doing a material-thickness change.” The Marines propose an add-on kit that could be used during sustained combat operations. The kit would add “substantially higher protection with just a few inches of armored plate to the bottom of the vehicle,” Moore says. But IEDs are not a big concern during the initial stages of an operation. “They don’t lend themselves as weapons of mobile offensive warfare.”

 

Another issue is vehicle noise, which is due to the tracks and suspension, not the engine, Moore says. “We were able to clean up the design of the track envelope, changing materials in the external drive and road wheels. The projection is that we’re just below the threshold of single hearing protection.” (For a report on operational noise and hearing loss, see Defense Technology International, November 2008, p. 37.)

 

Managing weight is an issue the Marines are tackling with the Army’s help. The Army has been researching a lighter-weight linked track that, if it fits on the EFV, could provide 800 lb. of weight savings. The Marines want a prototype set of the tracks in the next 12-18 months, says Moore. The requirement for the current track on the EFV is 3,000 mi., but General Dynamics may offer a track that, while it only lasts 2,000-2,500 mi., costs far less, even with replacements.

 

The first EFV is slated to begin testing in May 2010. As prototypes are delivered at about one a month, the Marines will run performance verification tests and a 500-hr. reliability test. “That will give us our first demonstrated new reliability numbers on a redesigned system,” Moore says. The Marines are hoping the numbers will be where they need to be. Demand for the vehicle is too high for more missteps.

[mangusta11]

EFV in futuro potrebbe essere adottato dal nostro esercito???

[diavolo rosso]

EFV in futuro potrebbe essere adottato dal nostro esercito???

 

Forse più avanti,sia per questioni economiche sia perchè i nostri AAV 7 sono relativamente giovani.

Modificato 14 Marzo 2009 da diavolo rosso

[Dominus]

Per adesso c'è solo il requisito per un anfibio ruotato, la MMI vorrebbe un mezzo della serie Piranha/LAV, mentre l'azione di lobby del CIO, forte specialmente nell'EI, punta su una versione anfibia del VBC.

[Ospite intruder]

Per adesso c'è solo il requisito per un anfibio ruotato, la MMI vorrebbe un mezzo della serie Piranha/LAV, mentre l'azione di lobby del CIO, forte specialmente nell'EI, punta su una versione anfibia del VBC.

 

 

Come al solito finirà che, dopo anni di discussioni a vuoto, al primo impegno serio dovremo prendere i mezzi in leasing (do you remember F16?).