

In this corner: a defense secretary who takes a dim view of an expensive, delayed vehicle. In the other corner: a Marine Corps that views that vehicle as a symbol of its cherished ship-to-shore ethos. The long-awaited budgetary showdown may be about to begin.

The Marines are twitchy with anticipation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is finally going to kill the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a swimming tank designed to help Marines storm a beach. It would be an understatement to say the writing's been on the wall for the landing craft. The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program is so old it can legally buy cigarettes, but even after $3 billion in research costs, it's not ready for development. And it'll cost the Pentagon an estimated $13 billion to meet the Corps' goal of buying 573 of them from General Dynamics.

Reuters reports that Gates is ready to say he's through with the program – maybe as early as Thursday. The Senate's moneymen are ready to see it go: in September, they approved funding for one last round of tests, and a final $184 million to buy off the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle's contractors if the tests fail. According to Manny Pacheco, a spokesman for the program, the tests, performed out at Camp Pendleton, should be wrapped up in another two and a half weeks.

The official line from the Corps is that they're not married to the swimming tank, as now-commandant Gen. James Amos told the Senate in September, but they are married to its amphibious nature, as amphibious warfare is central to the Marines' existence. But in practice, that's not much of a distinction. The head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Lt. Gen. George Flynn, told reporters in November that no other vehiclehas the ability to take Marines from a Navy ship to an enemy-held beach.

"Our position remains that the nation needs the capability inherent in the EFV," says Lt. Col. Matthew Mclaughlin, a corps spokesman. "If the EFV were to be canceled, we'd have to reexamine our existing and future power-projection, ship-to-shore capabilities and balance those present and future capabilities against future operational scenarios."

That reexamination may be in the cards. Pacheco says that the Marines have performed 300 out of 500 scheduled hours' worth of tests on the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. To pass, the swimming tank needs to go 16.4 hours without breaking down in any way – whether it's the turret failing or the engine conking out or the hydraulics giving out, whatever – and currently "we're in the low 20s," he says.

Tests should wrap up by the end of the month, in time for the issuance of next year's Pentagon budget request to Congress. But Gates might act to pull the plug before then. He's proven himself more than willing to kill off the services' top priorities, like the Army's networked personnel carriers of the future or the Air Force's favorite jet fighter. At the same time,previous rumors of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle's death have been greatly exaggerated.

For now, we're still in the shadowboxing and trash-talking stage of any swimming-tank showdown. Heritage Foundation defense wonk Mackenzie Eaglen tweeted in response to the Reuters story, "Defense cuts now past muscle and into bone."

Until there's an announcement about the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle's future from the Pentagon, the Marines are focusing on finishing the tests. "We're doing what we need to do to get it to the finish line," Pacheco says, "provided we're allowed to get it to the finish line."

Photo: DoD

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