Going Down Fighting?

The end for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program may be nigh, but program officials don't think its long-anticipated demise has anything to do with the vehicle's recent performance in testing.

Program spokesman Manny Pacheco told Inside the Navy today that the vehicle is on track to surpass its threshold for mean time between mission failures. The low-end goal is 16.4 hours between failures; Pacheco said he thinks they'll hit the low 20s.

According to Pacheco, the vehicle has so far completed about 300 hours of the 500 hours of testing planned. He estimated the testing itself will be finished in less than three weeks, after which the results will go to a scoring conference. Pacheco said the program is on track to have its final results ready by early February.

“We're chugging along,” he added. “We don't have any indications that there would be anything in testing right now that would lead people to believe that we're not doing what we need to do.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded what some saw as an early death knell for EFV at the Sea-Air-Space conference last year, where he questioned whether the Marines would ever again need to launch a full-out amphibious assault. Former Marine Corps Commandant James Conway told Inside the Navy in October that if the program is canceled, the service will have to go back to the drawing board because the need for an EFV-like platform would remain, though requirements might be toned down.