Amphibious Assault Vehicle - Survivability Upgrade
The venerable Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) is undergoing a Survivability Upgrade (AAV-SU) while development of the Amphibious Combat Vehicle is proceeding. The current plan is to upgrade 396 AAVs to the AAV-SU standard.
From the SAIC product brochure (1), upgrades include,
- integral aluminum underbody and crew compartment armor
- buoyant, ceramic-composite flank and roof armor
- integrated spall liner
- individual blast-resistant seats
- upgraded engine with increased horsepower and torque
- new, electronically-controlled transmission and Power Takeoff (PTO)
- new axial-flow water jets
- external fuel tanks
- upgraded vehicle controls and driver interfaces
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| AAV-SU |
Initial Operational Capability (IOC) is planned for 2019 with Full Operational Capability (FOC) following in 2023.
So, how is the project coming? There’s some good and some bad. Let’s take a quick look at the DOT&E 2017 Annual Report.
- Test units demonstrated desert and littoral operability – not exactly a surprise as the legacy AAV could already do that.
- Reliability is an issue with Mean Time Between Operational Mission Failures at 10.7 hrs versus the required 25 hrs.
- The transmission rapidly overheats when the vehicle’s tracks are used for swimming.
- The transmission operation requires the vehicle to slow and pause during the transition from sea to shore creating a vulnerability during a critical moment.
- The braking system is subject to a condition that can cause loss of hydraulic power and lock the brakes which necessitates remedial action that takes place outside the vehicle – undesirable in combat!
- The vehicle was able to accommodate 17 troops.
- The troop commander could not egress with the troops, instead having to egress out a top-side hatch and then down the side.
- The AAV-SU median egress time was 29 seconds, which exceeds the user requirement of 18 seconds.
- The vehicle met its force protection requirements.
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| AAV-SU |
Here’s an interesting recommendation from the DOT&E,
“Reduce the troop capacity threshold …”
The legacy AAV supposedly carries 21-25 Marines, depending on the source. Whether that’s true in practice, I don’t know but derating the AAV to 17 with a recommendation to further reduce that capacity is noteworthy.
In short, the survivability upgrade has some problems but nothing that appears unfixable in a reasonable time frame.
The biggest negative would seem to be the time frame for the project. Five to six more years to get a relatively simple upgrade to full operational capability seems excessive.
There’s no particular point to this post – just informational.
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(1)SAIC product brochure, “Assault Amphibious Vehicle Survivability Upgrade”,
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