The United States Marine Corps (USMC) has begun to say goodbye to its tanks and will operate none by the end of the decade, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to have armored vehicles in its arsenal. Instead of the tracked behemoths—which aren’t as ideally suited to the USMC’s amphibious role—the service has looked to the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (AVC), a ship-to-shore solution that will provide greater “expeditionary mobility.”

The 8x8 wheeled vehicles were developed to supplement and replace the aging Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV), which first entered service in 1972. Production of the ACV personal carrier (ACV-P) began in 2020. The USMC has called for multiple variants including one with a medium caliber cannon, the ACV-30, and a maintenance/recovery (ACV-R) model. In addition, a command and control (ACV-C) variant was developed to replace a similar platform in the AAV family of vehicles.

According to military intelligence analyst firm Janes, the ACV-C version has “reached its initial operating capability (IOC) in 2024, as scheduled.” The firm was informed by Colonel Timothy Hough, program manager for Advanced Amphibious Assault in the USMC’s Program Executive Office Land Systems, at this week’s SAE Media Group’s Future Armoured Vehicle Survivability (FAVS) 2024 conference in London.

The service plans to acquire at least thirty-three of the ACV-Cs, which will be used as the forward comms for a Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) combat operations center as well as command-and-control for the ground-based assault forces of a MAGTF as it moves from ship-to-shore and then inland. Each ACV-C is able to carry up to seven embarked battle staff. For defense, the ACV-C is armed with a medium-caliber machine gun.

The first AVC-C was delivered in January.

An Amphibious Vehicle for the Amphibious Service

The amphibious combat vehicle is an eight-wheel drive armored vehicle developed by BAE Systems and designed to provide open-ocean capabilities and land mobility. The ACV can “swim” approximately 12 nautical miles (22 km) from a landing ship to shore.

The personnel squad maneuver variant can carry a total of thirteen Marines and three crew members. It is equipped with a Kongsberg remote weapon station (RWS) that can be used to employ either a Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher or a .50 caliber machine gun.

It was four years ago that the ACV-P reached IOC, and approximately 390 vehicles were part of the USMC’s approved acquisition objective (AAO).

Janes also reported that “in his presentation to FAVS 2024 earlier the same day, Col Hough said contract negotiations are underway on the ACV-30, which will be equipped with a Northrop Grumman Mk44 automatic cannon and a Kongsberg remote weapon station (RWS).” As the USMC no longer operates the M1 Abrams main battle tank, with its fleet transferred to the U.S. Army, the ACV-30 is now the service’s most “heavy armed” vehicle.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced that it awarded a $329 million contract to Kongsberg for the production of 175 medium caliber weapons systems, and those will be employed on the full-rate production (FRP) turreted ACVs to be built in lots five and six.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected]

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