Marine's New Vehicle Designed to Defeat China

If war were to break out in the Pacific tomorrow, the United States Marines would be asked to do the job nobody else can, load up into amphibious vehicles and swim out to defend hundreds of islands around the pacific. But there’s only one problem, their current amphibious transport is more than 5 decades old. That’s why the Marines just received their first batch of the next generation amphibious combat vehicles, the ACV. Proving that Gen-Z marines get all the cool new gear.
Why is the old AAV being replaced? And How does it fit into the Marines' much larger amphibious focused transformation plan? And what are some of the challenges they’ve had with fielding it? Grab a box of crayons to munch on and let's find out.

written by: Chris Cappy and Diego Aceituno
edited by: Michael Michaelides

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Task & Purpose is a military news and culture oriented channel. We want to foster discussion about the defense industry.

#MARINES #MILITARY #WAR

[cfreeses]

The mispronunciation of Cerberus and sabot is making me twitch! Please say it was intentional lol

[jet]

"A long long time ago in 1996...." Wo there sir you take that back!

[pyro]

Those Marines that drowned in that Amtrak that foundered had pretty much NOTHING to do with the LVT's being bad, and EVERYTHING to do with the Corps being negligent, damn near criminally so IMO.

There were NUMEROUS systemic Corps-Wide issues that compounded eachother and allowed that incident to occur.:

1. The most glaring culprit that ALWAYS seems to occur, poor and infrequent maintenance of the LVT fleet by the USMC likely as some idiots way of "Saving Money" by spending 10x the amount fixing all the shit that broke cause they didn't maintain it for 10+ years.

The gaskets and seals for the hatches, rear ramp, etc on the incident AAVP-7A1 were bad and allowing water to slowly ingress the vehicle; in addition to this during this incident the engines died due to the USMC's poor and infrequent maintenance of them, this allowed the AAVP to drift sideways and instead of hitting them head on with the splash board, they started taking waves over the side that were flooding down in through the Driver and TC's OPEN Hatches which they refused to close and remained open this entire time.

And lastly as far as the AAVP goes; either due to the main engines dying and becoming inoperable, or as just another victim of the poor and spotty maintenance; the bilge pumps to pump out water on the vehicle were inoperable as well.

2. Irresponsible safety training by the USMC: NONE of the relatively fresh and inexperienced grunts in the back of that AAVP had undergone escape training for sinking vehicles, which As Far As I Knew all Marines deployed with an MEU are usually supposed to have passed both a sinking AAVP, AND sinking Helicopter escape course. None of the grunts in the AAVP-7A1 that went down had this training AFAIK AND were weighed down by their FULL kit which leads Mr to negligence #3.

3. A Terrible TC commanding the crew AND grunts of that AAVP, at NO point did he declare an emergency or the severity of how much water he was taking on, and at NO point did he inform the men being transported to ditch their gear and heavy clothing as they'd all quickly have to be escaping a sinking vehicle and survive in the sea until fast boats or a SnR helicopter can reach them.

IIRC (Aka "I could be wrong") The TC downplayed the severity of the situation to BOTH those on the radio/net he was asking for a tow, and to the troops he was carrying in the back. Essentially refusing to believe it was really happening, all the way until she finally foundered and sank upon which the 3 vehicle crewmen including the TC were forced to climb out of their hatches and swim for the surface. Meanwhile with no warnings or orders to prepare to abandon the vessel from the Vehicles Crew, ALL the troops in the back were still wearing their full plate carriers, plus rucksacks and couple dozen of "X" lbs of miscellaneous gear and equipment. When suddenly from their prospective, it's pitch black and their drowning trapped in a small metal box blind and weighed down by 80-100lbs of gear each. To survive they would've had to strip all and any heavy gear on them, while blindly pulling themselves to one of the multiple known hatch locations they could escape from, then single-file squeeze out the hatch and follow the bubbles (Up). And then not only were they given no preparation by the TC, remember they hadn't even taken the sinking vehicle and helicopter escape courses so wouldn't even know where all the escape hatches were anyways.


If The USMC had been willing to replace worn out seals/gaskets, and do preventative Maintenance on the power plant keeping it healthy, this wouldn't have happened; and even if it still did, had the men been giving just a single 5-min safety brief to point out the available escape points, more of them would likely still be here or at least had a chance.

[codnak]

One of the best guys I served with died on a that AAV that sank in 2020, leaving his wife and newborn behind. I think about him almost everyday, and about how we always had so much old gear in the Marine Corps. Even still Marines always preform. Imagine how much they could do with good gear. I also have to imagine how many more would be alive if we better emphasized safety checks and maintaining some level of modernity to our fleet for Marines. They hold high standards for everything or at least that's what is preached but obviously there are some gaps in the plan. Otherwise we would not have good people dying during a training event. Please lets get these amazing individuals some better vehicles. rest in peace Cpl. Rodd.

[ZY]

Gotta love that Italian design. ❤

I am happy to have had a chance to be inside a SuperAV. 🎉

[cyruszielinski]

The blast mitigating seats are way more comfortable than the wooden benches of the AAV. PLUS there is AC in the ACV

[bensonwang]

Make Peace or Die is the motto of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines but ACVs belong to the Amphibious Assault Battalions so it was probably an ACV attached to 1/5

[MichaelWKeller]

Thanks for covering the unsafe vehicle concerns. I wondered what the Marines would use, if these concerns were more trouble than you said. It is always far more than concerning when new vehicles can't be safe enough for our Marines to use. I was one of the people who said keeping the old AAV in operation is better than having unsafe new vehicles.

[MrOffTrail]

“Likely to be uncontested.” When I heard that, I had a clear vision of two or three Marines taking cover from enemy fire in an artillery crater, and one of them saying sarcastically “Likely to be uncontested.”

[jaypenha]

“ I want to have my crayons and eat it too”. Man this is just Gold for U.S. Army humor. I wish you were out of the army doing this when I was in (2006-2012). My platoon would have absolutely loved watching these vids.

[buncer]

Having served in 2nd LAR Bn in Afghanistan, the up-armored LAV-25 can take more than 7.62x39 but they can’t float at all with the armor kit on.

[Isometrix]

Having a 91% hit rate while stationary and 97% while moving is a whole new level of flex

[hellomynameishuman]

It's like a Bradley and a Striker had a baby, and it was amphibious.

[kevinking]

I'm GLAD YOU LIKE MY WORK. I build the ACV 30

[skitx]

I served in the Marines from 99 to 03 as a 2141 AAV mechanic. The hull of the AAV is actually cast aluminum and the armor was to deflect than absorb. I also got to play around with the EFV (we called it the AAAV or triple A V) and she was a beast. She could go 50 MPH in the water because the EFV “skipped” across the water while the AAV sunk into the water. The EFV had a twin turbo V12 where the pistons were the size of your head. The turbos kicked in at different RPMs too. Sad to see she never got put into production but after seeing the ACV, they made the right choice.

[indianajones]

But seriously, when aren’t marines going sicko mode?

[DezaltOfTheDreg]

Definitely not a T&P video without Cappy butchering names/words 😂 Don't get me wrong, It just add charms to his video tbh.

[cwalters]

I'm binge watching your youtube vids ! You've gained my trust and that's not easy to do. The random humor you throw in makes it so fun to learn from you

[Snipe]

"make peace or die" - lol. It's good to know marines never really change.

[AnonymousYouTubeconsumer]

9:03 You’re missing the point! Cerberus is a DEVIL DOG!

(Also, it’s pronounced SIR-be-RUS)