The U.S. Marine Corps recently marked the formal decommissioning of the tracked Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) family after more than five decades of service. Since 2018, the Marines have been working to replace the AAV fleet with new Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACV), an 8×8 wheeled design.
The Marines held a sundown ceremony for the AAV at the Assault Amphibian School at Camp Pendleton, California, on September 26, according to an official release put out yesterday. Whether any AAVs technically remain assigned to units as the service continues to work out plans for their final disposition is unclear.
The retirement event at Camp Pendleton featured a small parade of the vehicles, one of which had an individual in an alligator suit standing in an open hatch, as seen at the top of this story. Alligator and gator have been common nicknames for tracked amphibious vehicles, in general, since they first began entering U.S. military service during World War II. The term amtrac, a portmanteau of amphibious tractor, is also commonly used in the United States to refer to vehicles of this type.
The AAV family “has been many things, a ship-to-shore connector, an armored fighting vehicle, a troop carrier, a logistics platform and even sometimes a live [sic; life] boat,” Marine Col. Lynn Berendsen, the Assault Amphibian School’s commanding officer, said at the ceremony, according to the release. “Most importantly, it was in a place where Marines made their mark in combat, in service and in sacrifice.”
The Marine Corps began fielding what was originally known as the Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel-7 (LVTP-7) in 1972. The LVTP-7 was smaller, lighter, and could carry fewer personnel inside than the preceding LVTP-5, which had entered service in 1956, but was faster on land and in the water and offered greater unrefueled range. Unlike its predecessor, which relied on its tracks for propulsion in the water, the LVTP-7 also featured a pair of water jets on either side of the rear of the hull. The vehicle was armed with a single .50 caliber M85 machine gun in a turret on top of the front of the hull, offset to the right. The Marines received additional specialized variants configured for command and control (LVTC-7) and recovery (LVTR-7) missions, as well.
The LVTP-7 arrived too late for service in the Vietnam War, but Marines did bring them to Lebanon in the early 1980s as part of a multi-national peacekeeping operation. They were also employed in the amphibious assault role as part of the U.S. intervention in Grenada in 1983. It’s also worth noting here that LVTP-7s were offered for export, and Argentinian examples were used in the opening phase of the Falklands War in 1982.
Starting in the early 1980s, the Marine Corps’ LVTP-7 fleet was also put through a major upgrade program, which included a host of improvements, including a new engine and transmission, and updates to the water jet pumps. The resulting vehicles were redesignated AAVP-7s. The LVTC-7s and LVTR-7s were also brought up to this new configuration, becoming AAVC-7s and AAVR-7s. Later in the 1980s, the original M85-armed turrets on the AAVs also began being replaced with completely new ones sporting the much more common M2 .50 caliber machine gun and a 40mm Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher.
The Marines took their improved AAVs into combat during the Gulf War in 1991. The vehicles were also employed in other operations in the years following the end of the Cold War, including in Somalia in the early 1990s. This period also saw the development and fielding of the Enhanced Applique Armor Kits (EAAK), giving the vehicles improved protection against small arms fire and shrapnel.
The AAVs went through another round of major upgrades starting in the late 1990s, including another engine change and improvements to the suspension. The resulting A1 variants notably had the same engine and other components as the U.S. Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicles, offering additional logistical and supply chain benefits.
Marines brought AAVs with them back to Iraq in 2003, where their performance faced significant criticism, especially over the level of protection afforded to the crew and passengers. Eight of the vehicles were damaged or destroyed during the Battle of Nasiriyah, with at least one having been struck by fire from a friendly U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthog ground attack jet.
“I can think of several times in and around Fallujah in 2005 having been shot at many times, having had bullets bounce off the side of the vehicle, knowing that it was going to operate every time I needed it to,” Assault Amphibian School commander Col. Berendsen did tell our colleagues at Task & Purpose in an interview yesterday. “It was just one of those things that I was very comfortable operating in, and I knew it was always going to take on the job, no matter what it was after.”
Starting in 2012, the Marines had moved to replace AAVs with a more modern amtrac called the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV). The EFV was notably designed to travel at nearly 30 miles per hour over the water by hydroplaning. This was intended to allow U.S. Navy amphibious warfare ships to deploy the vehicles from much further offshore, helping to protect them from growing threats, especially shore-based anti-ship cruise missile batteries. The EFV also featured a turret with a 30mm automatic cannon, offering a significant boost in firepower.
All of this came at a price, with the EFV eventually having an estimated unit cost of around $20 million, more than that of a contemporary variant of the M1 Abrams tank. While the original goal was for the first EFVs to be fielded in 2015, the program was instead cancelled over cost growth in 2011. Development of another round of upgrades for the AAVs, with a heavy focus on improved survivability, began in 2015, but was also canceled in 2018 following the decision to acquire the new ACVs.
By that point, the aging AAVs had also become increasingly prone to serious and sometimes deadly accidents, including fires and instances where the vehicles sunk, trapping their occupants. In a particularly infamous incident in July 2020, one of the vehicles sank during training in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Clemente Island, California, killing the eight Marines and one U.S. Navy sailor on board. In late 2021, the Marines ceased regular deployments of AAVs and banned them from entering the water except in support of emergency crisis response operations. The vehicles were still being used in exercises on land, including ones overseas, as recently as last month.
The replacement ACVs also suffered a string of accidents early in their fielding. The Marines placed the blame for that largely on the 8×8 wheeled design being substantially different from the tracked AAV, and personnel having trouble making the transition. ACVs are now in regular use in support of operations worldwide, and the service is in the process of acquiring additional variants, including ones featuring turrets with 30mm automatic cannons.
The Marine Corps’ decision to go with a wheeled design over a tracked one in the first place had been the subject of much debate. In particular, compared to tracked types, wheeled armored vehicles have historically offered mixed performance on softer ground, like sandy beaches, but also higher speeds on firmer ground, especially improved roads. The ACV is also notably no faster in the water than the AAV. You can read more about all of this here.
Since 2020, the Marine Corps’ overall view of armored vehicles has changed dramatically, as well. The service is still in the process of a total overhaul of its force structure in line with new expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations (CONOPS), which notably put significantly less emphasis on operations involving heavy forces deploying via traditional large amphibious warfare ships. This already led to the total divestment of its M1 Abrams tanks. The planned total size of the ACV fleet was also slashed from 1,122 vehicles to 632.
AAVs do continue to serve in many other armed forces globally, and the current prime contractor for the vehicles, U.K.-headquartered BAE Systems, continues to offer them for sale. American allies and partners have also already moved to acquire second-hand ex-Marine Corps examples in recent years.
Regardless of how the Marine Corps’ ACV and other armored vehicle plans may now continue to evolve, the sun has set on the service’s AAVs.
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