So in early 2011 the Marine Corps decided to cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and start over.
FORBES: Marines Fight For Crucial Vehicle As Budget Cuts Loom
The firm has blamed the cuts on a decline in workload on the Ministry of Defence's Armoured Fighting Vehicle programmes.
The men were loaded into the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle.
The appropriators proposed to reduce funding for the last remnant of the Future Combat System, a next-generation fighting vehicle, by about three quarters.
Already, the defense secretary has signaled that he is inclined to cancel the Marines' top ground force modernization program - the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV).
The Corps saw this problem coming long ago, and began developing a successor in the 1990s that came to be known as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.
FORBES: Marines Fight For Crucial Vehicle As Budget Cuts Loom
And they are developing an armored fighting vehicle that is so much better than existing amphibious vehicles it turns the sea from an obstacle into a maneuver space.
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The canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle would have achieved high speed in the water by using a planing design that enabled the vehicle to ride on top of the sea.
FORBES: Marines Fight For Crucial Vehicle As Budget Cuts Loom
The company is building four different variants of new armoured fighting vehicle which will replace the ageing SVRT vehicle and provide troops, it is said, with more protection and firepower.
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It also ganged up on the Marine Corps with Secretary Gates to kill a desperately needed Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle that would have delivered warfighters through the surf onto hostile beaches.
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That brings me to the politics surrounding the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which present something of a case study in how senior policymakers must approach proposals to kill or cut back big weapons programs.
The vehicle business was assembled more recently, and although it faces a downdraft in demand as U.S. troops depart Iraq, its Bradley fighting vehicle looks well positioned to replace aging Army troop carriers.
Its future means of performing amphibious assaults (the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle), its principal airborne assault vehicle (the V-22 Osprey) and the backbone of its dedicated ground-support aviation for decades to come (the F-35) would all be eliminated or rendered unaffordable.
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"We welcome the announcement by the secretary of state for defence confirming that the SV (specialist vehicle) programme is secure in the MoD's future AFV (armoured fighting vehicle) pipeline and core programme of committed funding, " said Dr Sandy Wilson, president and managing director of General Dynamics UK, the prime contractor on the programme.
BBC: General Dynamics: British Army deal secures Oakdale jobs
The engineer and grandmother who climbed the ranks of the defense establishment while a single parent was charged with the difficult task of helping BAE make the transition from a supplier of heavy weaponry used in wartime, like the 33-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle, into a more diversified provider of equipment, electronics and software.
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In the fighting, a police armoured vehicle was set on fire but the occupants managed to escape.
All of this is fighting up against the limitations of the launch vehicle.
Mr Mullin reserves his real passion and energy for fighting the government car-pool service, which is determined to punish him for refusing a chauffeur-driven vehicle, and the High Hedges Bill, a noble bid to control the spread of fast-growing leylandii.
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