The Marine Corps has announced new standards on training and operations for its Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV, as it continues to deploy the 32-metric-ton machine in key training after early launch troubles.
Two ACVs rolled over in the surf during separate amphibious exercises in 2022, causing the Marine Corps to issue a monthslong pause on waterborne operations for the vehicle. No Marines were injured in those mishaps, the service said, but the events pushed the Corps to review safety, training and operations procedures for the ACV moving forward.
Now, as the ACV hits the water again — including a debut employment in the Pacific this spring — the Marine Corps has codified the Assault Amphibian Training and Operating Procedures Standardization, or AATOPS, manual, for the vehicle’s operators to digest and execute. The new guidelines were finalized in September.
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Some of the standards included in the AATOPS outlined the use of safety boats, which accompany the ACV during waterborne operations; emergency procedures; and maximum surf levels that the vehicle can safely operate in, said Lt. Col. Matthew Ludlow, the officer in charge of the Transition Training Unit, an entity that oversees the shift from the Corps’ decades-old Amphibious Assault Vehicle to the newer ACV.
“The AATOPS program represents [a] service-level approach to improving combat readiness and achieving a substantial reduction in [incidents],” Ludlow told Military.com in a phone interview Friday. “We’ve taken the lessons learned and we’ve incorporated that into the manual, and we provided a method by which we can continually refine our process.”
Inspired by aviation procedures and standards, ACV operators will be required to take yearly tests on the vehicle’s employment, basic operations, egress procedures and safety measures. Ludlow said that the AATOPS is also meant to support unit commanders in planning training for Marines who use the ACV.
“If you don’t take it, then you don’t operate,” Ludlow said of the test, adding that the manual describes individual steps that each operator in the ACV is supposed to follow during an emergency procedure. The expectation is that those steps are memorized and tested “so if you miss a single step, you have to go back and take the test again,” he said.
As the Corps marches on with its Pacific-oriented Force Design plan, the ACV has emerged as critical equipment to transport Marines from ship to shore during amphibious operations. With a range of 12 nautical miles, the ACV can carry 16 Marines — including its three-person crew — trucking along the surf to a beachhead, for example.
The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Camp Pendleton, California, has been at the center of the ACV’s latest employments, including the vehicle’s first operational launch in the Pacific during a May exercise in Oyster Bay, Philippines. The following month, the MEU hit another milestone when it conducted its first overseas ship-to-shore operation as it launched from the USS Harpers Ferry, an amphibious ship, the service said in an announcement.
As late as this month, hundreds of Marines and sailors on the West Coast also participated in what the service called an “inaugural iteration” of a quarterly exercise in which ACVs successfully transported infantry Marines from a ship during day and night operations.
Still, the ACV still retains some limitations, a Marine Corps spokesperson told Military.com on Friday, in that it is restricted from transiting the “surf zone,” where waves break before the shore. The ACV can be used in open water, “protected water” and land-based operations, the spokesperson said.
In September 2021, the service sidelined the ACV due to problems with its towing mechanism. The following year, USNI reported a video that showed one of the 2022 ACV mishaps, where one vehicle became disabled and another rolled over in high surf. In October 2022, another ACV rolled over in the surf, resulting in the firing of the Assault Amphibian School’s commander.
No surf incidents caused injuries or fatalities, the service said, though in December an ACV rolled over during a ground movement at Camp Pendleton, killing one Marine and injuring more than a dozen others.
Now, the service appears to be taking a measured approach to the vehicle’s employment and operator training after those early issues sidelined the ACV for a time and its predecessor — the Amphibious Assault Vehicle — experienced a fatal mishap in 2020 in which nine service members were killed as a result of training gaps, a poorly maintained vehicle and insufficient safety protocols, a Navy investigation found.
Ludlow said that the Transition Training Unit is still “combing through” new feedback from the 15th MEU’s review of the operations, but “we feel pretty good that the lessons they were learning in stride, we have incorporated so that there’s nothing huge out there that’s going to negatively impact safety one way or the other that isn’t already incorporated.”
He said that the development of the AATOPS has been a couple years in the making and included feedback from the Marine Corps’ Training and Education Command, engineers and other subject-matter experts who have been involved with the ACV since it was fielded.
He also noted that, in conjunction with the new manual, the service has bolstered “schoolhouse” and operational units with a safety and standardization department led by a field-grade officer to provide oversight.
The new manual was requested by Military.com, but the publication was denied.
It has a Controlled Unclassified Information status to protect “sensitive details on vehicle capabilities and limitations, warranting restricted access to safeguard operational security,” a Marine Corps spokesperson said.
“Our community standards of practice now aren’t just standards of practice in the community, but they’re codified as service policy,” Ludlow said.
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