The Marine Corps is responsible for the conduct of amphibious operations in support of the full spectrum of U.S. national security objectives. If the Marines need armored fighting vehicles in the early stages of an amphibious landing, these vehicles must either be transported by landing craft with limited protection against enemy fire, or the armored vehicle must come ashore under its own power. Like current AAVs, the EFV is designed to roll off a Navy amphibious assault ship, move under its own power to the beach, and cross the beach and operate inland. The EFV is designed to be launched 25 miles off shore (the AAV can be launched only 2 miles from shore) permitting the fleet to operate "over the horizon," where it theoretically would be less vulnerable to enemy fire. There are concerns that the 25-mile over the horizon operating capability may no longer provide the protection to the fleet that it once did. One example of such lack of protection is the 2006 Hezbollah C-802 cruise missile attack against an Israeli ship where two missiles were fired, with one hitting the Israeli warship, which was about 10 miles from shore, and the second missile striking an Egyptian ship 36 miles from shore. Concerns also have been raised that, when ashore, the flat-bottomed EFV may be excessively vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The EFV would be an armored, fully tracked infantry combat vehicle operated by a three-person crew that can carry 17 combat-equipped Marines. It is to be a self-deploying, high-speed amphibious vehicle capable of transporting Marines from ships to objectives inland and aims to have the speed, maneuvering capabilities, fire power, and protection to operate with main battle tanks on land. It is intended to have a 20-knot speed in the water and a 345-mile range ashore with a 45-kilometer-per-hour speed on hard-surfaced roads. The EFV is to be designed to have modular armor and expanded mine blast protection and mount a 30mm high-velocity cannon in a stabilized turret. The EFV is also supposed to be able to communicate in joint networks and operate as part of a joint land force. There are to be two EFV variants. The EFV-P1 would carry a Marine rifle squad and its equipment and provide direct fire support during combat operations. The EFV-C1 variant would provide command and control capabilities for commanders and their staffs. The EFV is described as the Marines' number one priority ground weapon system acquisition program and is the only Acquisition Category (ACAT) 1D program managed by the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps EFV Program Office is collocated with the EFV's prime contractor—General Dynamics—in Woodbridge, VA, and the Marines claim that collocation—the first of its kind for a major weapon system—has greatly reduced government contractor design costs and streamlined the program decision-making process. In 1988, Acquisition and Program Decision Memorandums were signed by defense officials to initiate the Concept Exploration/Definition Phase (CE/D) of what was then known as the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV) program. In 1995, the program entered into the Program Definition and Risk Reduction (PDRR) phase, where it was considered by many to be a "model defense acquisition program," winning two DOD awards for successful cost and technology management. In June 1996, a contract was awarded to General Dynamics Land Systems to begin full-scale engineering development of their design. Based on the aforementioned early success of the program, the Marine Corps awarded a cost-plus contract to General Dynamics in July 2001 for the Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the program. General Dynamics and the Marines envisioned that the SDD phase would be completed by October 2003, a schedule that some say "proved too ambitious." In 2003, the Marines renamed the program the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that: The program did not allow enough time to demonstrate maturity of the EFV design during SDD. The original SDD schedule of about three years proved too short to conduct all necessary planning and to incorporate the results of tests into design changes. Specifically, the original schedule did not allow adequate time for testing, evaluating the results, fixing the problems, and retesting to make certain that problems are fixed before moving forward. Because of these and other difficulties, the EFV program was "rebaselined" in November 2002, adding an additional year to the program schedule, and then rebaselined again in March 2003, also adding another year to the program schedule. In December 2004, EFV prototypes experienced major failures of the hull electronics unit (HEU), the vehicle's main computer system. These failures caused the water-mode vehicle steering to freeze, making the vehicle non-responsive. The EFV also experienced significant problems in September and October 2004 with the bow flap—a folding panel extended forward to generate additional hydrodynamic lift as the EFV moves through the water. The EFV experienced a myriad of hydraulics system failures, leaks, and pressure problems during testing that contributed to low reliability ratings. Because of reliability problems, the originally required 70-hour mean time between operational mission failure (MTBOMF) rate for the EFV was reduced by the Marines to 43.5 hours. Because of these demonstrated failures and related concerns about a lack of program management and oversight, the program was rebaselined for a third time in March 2005, this time adding an additional two years to the extra two years added during the previous rebaselinings. In 2006, the EFV was subject to an Operational Assessment—a series of tests to demonstrate that it could meet performance requirements—that, if successfully completed, would permit the program to move into the production phase. During this assessment, the EFV experienced numerous critical failures and, because of repeated breakdowns, the EFV failed to meet reliability requirements and failed the assessment. For example, during the test, the vehicles were able to operate for only 4.5 hours between breakdowns and required about 3.4 hours of corrective maintenance for every 1 hour of operation—a maintenance burden that evaluators said would "wear out a unit under realistic combat operations." Poor reliability also resulted in 117 Operational Mission Failures and 645 Unscheduled Maintenance Actions during testing. The EFV's low reliability resulted in the EFV completing 2 out of 11 attempted amphibious tests, 1 out of 10 gunnery tests, and none of the 3 scheduled land mobility tests. The EFV prototypes tested were approximately 1,900 pounds too heavy to achieve the desired high water speed and, in some circumstances, could not accommodate equipment needed by Marines for special climatic conditions. Evaluators also noted significant problems in terms of limited visibility, excessive noise, and difficulty in reloading the EFV's main gun. In the aftermath of 2006 Operational Assessment, the Marines "went back to the drawing board." In February 2007, the EFV program office issued a "sources sought" notice, requesting information from industry leaders on "tracked combat vehicles that can provide an alternative design concept of the EFV"—a perceived vote of no confidence in General Dynamics by the Marines. Also that month, the Navy formally advised Congress that the EFV program would incur a cost breach, requiring program recertification under the Nunn-McCurdy Act (10 U.S.C. 2433). Finally, in late February 2007, the Navy announced that it would have to relax EFV performance and reliability requirements in order for the program to continue. In March 2007, the Marines modified the original SDD contract and awarded General Dynamics an additional $143.5 million to redesign the EFV. In what has been termed "the largest program setback," the Marines decided in June 2007 to repeat the entire SDD phase, meaning that instead of the original completion date of 2003, the SDD phase—if successful—would now be completed in 2011, eight years behind the original schedule. In August 2008, the Marines and General Dynamics signed an SDD II contract, and work on seven new EFV prototypes was projected to begin in January 2009. These new prototypes were to include, inter alia, rewired electronics to better protect against sea water, a rebuilt and strengthened gun turret to improve ammunition feed to the main gun, and the addition of trim tabs to make the EFV more stable in the water. The EFV was scheduled to be built at the U.S. military's joint tank production facility at Lima, OH. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the EFV passed its December 2008 Critical Design Review (CDR) and, with 94% of the system's design models releasable, that EFV's critical technologies were mature and its design is stable. Because the EFV's design has been stabilized, a number of critical manufacturing processes can be established. Because the EFV passed the CDR, the go-ahead was given for the production of the seven new prototypes. These new prototypes are expected to include almost 400 engineering design improvements to improve vehicle reliability. It is likely that many of these engineering design improvements will add weight to the EFV. One potential change that could have helped reduce EFV weight was incorporating a lighter-weight linked track that the Army was researching, which could reduce EFV weight by 800 pounds. The Marines have reportedly received four personnel carrier EFV prototypes and one command and control variant and are taking them through developmental testing at the Amphibious Assault Test Branch at Camp Pendleton, CA. EFV testing is scheduled to run through late January 2011. Each vehicle is slated to receive about 500 hours of reliability testing.