But there's only one problem, their current amphibious transports are more than five decades old.

That's why the Marines just received their first batch of 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 the new vehicle fit into the Marines' larger plans?

Grab a box of crayons to munch on and let's find out.

I think amphibious operations are one of the most difficult to pull off because so much can go wrong.

We're talking about a 35 ton piece of tin box steel floating and swimming through the ocean while simultaneously sending 30 Mike Mike explosive rounds on target.

For Marines to do their job correctly, they need to be able to trust that they're loading into a seaworthy vehicle.

For the Marines, it's sink or swim, and sink is not an option.

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The first thing we need to understand is how Marine Corps amphibious and mechanized operations work because it's a little bit different than the Army.

The U.S.

Marine Corps has about 400 of the LAV-25s and 1,300 of the old AAVs for their total complement of amphibious vehicles, but these serve two distinct and very different purposes.

The LAV, for instance, has a powerful 25mm cannon, and it's useful for reconnaissance missions and getting from point A to point B and dropping Marines off while laying down plenty of hate, but they only have thin welded steel for armor, which means they can only stop like a 7.62x39mm round from an AK-47.

Higher powered armor piercing, full powered small arms will punch right through.

That's just the base original version of the LAV, of course there are more heavily armored variants.

They're also pretty small with room for only half a squad of 6 dismounts, but all this has the plus side of keeping the weight really low at 13 tons.

LAV-25s are amphibious in that they can cross small rivers and they can get to shore from the beach, but they're not true amphibious assault vehicles.

For example, they would probably sink pretty easily to the bottom of the ocean if you tried to swim one through tough surf from a landing ship in the ocean 22km or 15 miles from shore.

That's where the Marine's AAV comes in.

It's job is to transport a full squad of 13 Marines dismounted over rough choppy waves for long distances.

That's called ship to shore capability.

This is the vehicle that the next generation ACV will ultimately replace this role because the fleet is starting to show its age at this point.

An incident in 2020 for example left 9 Marines dead after an AAV sank.

This destroyed some Marines trust in it.

The old AAV is tracked so it requires more maintenance and its armor is lacking especially in the underbelly against landmines.

We've seen how effective landmines have been on the global war on terror and more recently in the war in Ukraine.

The AAV is combat proven though.

It was used in amphibious operations during the invasion of Granada and Panama proving their worth again in Iraq as a land vehicle.

But one of the downsides is that it's limited to having a .50 caliber machine gun and Mark 19 grenade launcher instead of a true cannon.

And worse yet, those weapon platforms aren't stabilized.

So you need to come to a complete stop before firing them.

You might as well wave a giant red flag like how a lot of my goth ex-girlfriends were.

So in light of these aging capabilities, the United States Marine Corps contacted General Dynamics Land Systems a long long time ago back in 1996 to start designing the next generation Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or the EFV.

The main things on the wish list for that was the ship to shore capability full squad while also having more firepower.

I want to have my crayon and eat it too.

But with the global war on terror starting in 2001 and rising budget concerns, it meant that they canceled the project by 2011 to focus on the current mission that they had on hand instead.

Pour some out for the old EFV and all the good times we could have had together.

However, by 2013, relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China was starting to really sour.

The Chinese military appeared to be increasingly militarizing islands around Taiwan.

Amphibious operations are back on the menu, boys.

This gave the Marines a new purpose in life.

It's like Batman needing Joker or peanut butter needing jelly.

Initially, the Marine ACV program was actually supposed to be a smaller support vehicle for the heavier canceled EFV.

In 2011, they continued the ACV vehicle, but as their main effort.

Instead of designing a brand new vehicle from scratch, they looked to adapt a already existing off-the-shelf solution.

So the Marines went shopping all around town.

That's a movie I would see.

The Marines go shopping.

And they picked out their favorite one, which was produced by an Italian company called Iveco.

They modified their existing Super AV.

It's hard to find details on the ACV because it's classified.

It's a Marine Corps vehicle, but you can still search the Super AV and you can get a better understanding of its abilities and where it came from.

The Super AV was based on a 1999 design for the Brazilian Army.

Then in 2010, it was upgraded and adapted for fielding in the Italian military.

By 2018, the United States Marines had confirmed that the Super AV was their pick to replace the AAV.

It's interesting because Iveco, the Italian defense company, also creates armored designs for China and Russia's military, which is part of the reason why I think they split the production off to BAE Systems and sold them the rights to produce the vehicle.

They're now manufactured and produced in York, Pennsylvania at their manufacturing plant there.

And they were also modified and upgraded to fit the Marine Corps' purposes.

Heavily modified.

Now I'd like to know which one of you jarheads is responsible for writing the phrase, make peace or die, on the bow of one of the new ACVs, because I absolutely love it.

I'm going to start a petition to make that the slogan of the entire US military.

In December 2020, the vehicle went into full rate production, meaning 80 would be pumped out at that York, Pennsylvania plant every year.

It could carry 13 Marines plus 3 crew and 2 days worth of supplies and ammo into battle.

For context, this thing is pretty damn big.

Even though it's not boxy looking like its predecessor, it carries 13 dismounts in the dismounted vehicle of any US military vehicle right now.

The new force design 2030 plan would see thousands of Marines landed onto hundreds of different small islands around the Philippines and Taiwan in the event of war.

Many of these landings would likely be uncontested, but they require them being able to get there quickly and being able to set up an independent small base of operations on them.

They also need to be less detectable, which is why it's nice that unlike the AAV, the new ACV doesn't expel a giant plume of black smoke when the engine starts up.

It has a more quiet running engine.

That's why its survivability has been enhanced so that it can take more of a beating from the enemy in these austere environments.

The new ACV has stronger armor rated to stop .50 caliber bullets thanks to its bolt-on armor plate.

Overall, BAE Systems estimates that the ACV's protection is more than three times greater than the old AAV.

One squad of Marines nicknamed their vehicle Cerberus, which in Greek mythology is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld, preventing the dead from leaving and stopping the living from entering without permission.

I thought the Marines were supposed to be a bunch of knuckle-dragging, cold-blooded dudes murking everything left and right.

Now they're referencing Greek mythology while they slay.

God help me if we find a Marine that's pretentious out there.

No, I'm kidding.

I love it.

But its most important aspect is its boom-boom.

If you were out in the middle of nowhere and you were stuck on a deserted island, what are the three things that you would take with you?

For me, it's a 30mm cannon, next-generation armor-piercing rounds, and my Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Because why drink coffee when you can drink watered-down caffeine liquid?

One of the four main different variants of the ACV is the 30mm autocannon version.

This will be the biggest, most powerful direct-fire support that the Marine infantry have organic to them now.

It has a 30mm Mark 44 Bushmaster II chaingun and an unmanned turret developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg.

The unmanned turret keeps weight and size down, which in turn allows the ACV-30 to still have enough room to carry troops and retain stability in rough seas.

It packs 50% more firepower than the LAV's 25mm version.

This is the same type of 30mm as the famous Gatling gun on the A-10 Warthog.

The Tungsten Mark 258 discarding sabot round has some insane capabilities.

Publicly available sources claim that it can penetrate 100mm of armor at 1km.

That may not be enough to take on main battle tanks from the front, but anything short of that is in serious trouble.

Some have floated the idea that you could use these platforms to punch holes in smaller enemy naval vessels from the shore, sinking the enemy ships from 4km away if they dare to get close to the littoral.

So far we know at least 12 of these vehicles have already been forward deployed to Okinawa already.

But not everyone loves them.

They've had their fair share of criticisms that they've faced.

Many Marines wish that the EFV had been produced instead.

There was a report created by the Pentagon Operational Testing and Evaluation Arm which tests new weapon systems.

They claim that the new Marine ACV had some vulnerabilities in its survivability.

We don't know exactly what that means because that part was classified, but we can assume that they weren't happy with its protection.

What we do know is that regular Marine grunts find it to be uncomfortable because of the new blast mitigating seats.

Blast mitigating seats were installed on my old Stryker before I got out of the Army.

They have some plies and give to them, it goes up and down so in the case of an explosion it would prevent you from snapping your neck on the roof.

But they're also tight and designed really for someone not wearing body armor.

So the report found that it's uncomfortable to be in the vehicle.

We probably spent $12 million to get that report from someone at the DoD just so that they could tell us that it sucks to be inside of an armored vehicle.

No kidding?

Next can you get a $6 million report on how a veggie omelette MRE tastes awful?

However the report does also point out that quote during gunnery live fire against stationary targets, ACV sections hit 91% of the targets when the ACV was stationary and 97% of the targets when the vehicle was on the move.

Which highlighted its advantages versus the old AAV.

It also might seem somewhat unusual to pick a wheel design, right, when it's going to be called upon to traverse wet beach, sand, and marshy terrain.

Traditionally tracked vehicles are better amphibious beach assaults.

But the belief is that times have changed since the 1970s and so too has our technology.

And new wheeled vehicle tech developed since then can address that shortcoming.

It's inline drive technology lets all four wheels on each side pull at the same time.

Similar to how tracked vehicles actually work.

Add in the higher ground clearance and tire inflation system and now wheeled vehicles in the new age have come a long way.

The idea is you get the benefits of more maneuverability and being able to traverse over sandy beachheads while not having the pain in the ass of tracked vehicle maintenance.

The new ACV can scoot at 65 miles per hour on land.

That's 20 miles per hour faster than the older tracked AAV and has a better range of 352 miles compared to the AAV's 300 miles.

That means no need to do more than close the hatches, extend the splash guard, and the ACV is ready to swim basically right out the box.

This 690 horsepower engine drives two small thrusters at the back of the hull that provide power and maneuverability to the 35 ton vehicle while it's in the water.

During testing, the ACV handled waves up to 9 feet with no problem, meaning even heavy surf is no obstacle for United States Marines.

Currently, there are seven MEUs that deploy around the world ready to respond to a crisis at any moment.