U.S. Marines Expand Amphibious Combat Vehicle Role Beyond Ship-to-Shore Operations.

U.S. Marines used the Amphibious Combat Vehicle to carry infantry through an amphibious raid rehearsal at Camp Lejeune, with imagery released by DVIDS on Sept. 16, 2026, showing the platform taking on a role that extends beyond ship-to-shore movement. The training highlights how the ACV can give Marine raiding forces protected mobility ashore, allowing them to move faster between objectives and reduce the risks of remaining concentrated in contested littoral terrain.

The rehearsal showed the ACV functioning as an armored maneuver platform for infantry preparing to deploy with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, rather than simply as a beach-crossing vehicle. Combined with the unit’s separate training in unmanned reconnaissance and company-level precision strike, this approach points toward more dispersed Marine forces able to move under armor, find targets and generate combat effects with greater tactical independence.

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U.S. Marines with BLT 1/8 used Amphibious Combat Vehicles to move infantry during a 26th MEU raid rehearsal at Camp Lejeune, highlighting the ACV’s expanding role in protected maneuver beyond traditional ship-to-shore operations (Picture Source: USMC)

On September 16, 2026, U.S. Marines with Battalion Landing Team 1/8 rehearsed an amphibious raid at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, with an Amphibious Combat Vehicle transporting infantry during the assault sequence. Conducted during the final stages of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s pre-deployment training, the event points to a wider transformation in how Marines may employ armored mobility in contested littorals. Imagery and information released by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), show an ACV supporting a raiding force rather than simply demonstrating ship-to-shore mobility.

From Amphibious Transport to Tactical Maneuver Platform

The significance lies increasingly in what the ACV enables after the landing force reaches shore. The Marine Corps describes the platform as providing amphibious and expeditionary protected mobility, using the sea as maneuver space while supporting dismounted infantry ashore. The ACV family also introduces command-and-control and 30 mm fire-support variants alongside the personnel carrier. This pushes the platform beyond the traditional image of an amphibious vehicle as primarily a beach-crossing transport. In an ACV-supported raid, armored mobility can help infantry move rapidly between landing areas and objectives, retain protection during inland maneuver and potentially reposition before an adversary can develop an effective targeting solution.

For the 26th MEU, the Sept. 16 rehearsal is particularly revealing because it forms part of a broader progression toward operational deployment. On Sept. 2, BLT 1/8 conducted a mechanized infantry live-fire range at Camp Lejeune in preparation for the MEU’s upcoming deployment. Months earlier, during Type Commander’s Amphibious Training, ACVs carrying 1/8 Marines conducted shore-to-ship movement to USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), while other MEU elements operated with Kearsarge and USS Arlington (LPD 24). Read together, these events show a logical progression from Navy-Marine Corps integration at sea, to mechanized live fire ashore, and finally to an ACV-supported raid rehearsal during the MEU’s final work-up phase.

That progression also reflects a wider change in amphibious warfare. Traditional large-scale amphibious assaults retain their place in Marine Corps capabilities, but a future force operating under persistent surveillance, coastal missiles, unmanned systems and long-range precision fires may not always have the freedom to mass around a small number of predictable landing areas. Marine Corps planning has long recognized that modern anti-access and area-denial systems can push the sea base farther offshore and require forces to operate in more disaggregated and dispersed formations. Smaller raid forces offer another option: move quickly, exploit a temporary opening, accomplish a defined objective and displace before the enemy can concentrate effects. The objective is not invisibility, but denying an opponent a stable, high-value target long enough to complete the mission.

ACVs, Drones and Precision Fires Reshape the Infantry Raid

The potentially more consequential development is how ACVs, infantry, unmanned reconnaissance and precision weapons could converge into one tactical package. The Sept. 16 release does not state that drones or loitering munitions participated in that specific raid, and the events should not be conflated. However, Marines from the same BLT 1/8 employed the Bolt-M autonomous air vehicle during an Organic Precision Fires-Light live-fire event at Camp Lejeune on Aug. 28. According to the 26th MEU, OPF-L combines reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition with precision strike while placing a portable loitering-munition capability at company level. Within the same pre-deployment cycle, BLT 1/8 is separately rehearsing armored maneuver and a much shorter sensor-to-shooter chain.

That combination could have major consequences for infantry tactical autonomy. Marine companies have traditionally depended on mortars for immediately responsive organic fires and on artillery, aviation or other supporting assets for targets beyond their reach. OPF-L adds another layer by allowing lower-echelon units to find, track and potentially engage targets with an organic precision system. For an ACV-supported raid force operating at distance from the main body, that can be as important as raw firepower. A unit able to move under armor, deploy its own reconnaissance system and generate a precision effect locally would have greater freedom to act when communications are disrupted or higher-echelon fires are unavailable. It does not eliminate supporting arms; it gives commanders another way to preserve tempo inside a compressed tactical decision cycle.

The concept has clear relevance to a possible Pacific contingency, although the Marine Corps did not describe the Sept. 16 Camp Lejeune rehearsal as Indo-Pacific-specific. Across island chains and fragmented coastlines, dispersed forces may need to move between landing sites, establish temporary positions, control key terrain and then relocate before enemy sensors and fires can close the targeting cycle. Marine Corps Force Design explicitly emphasizes distributed formations, resilient command and control, sensing, precision fires and contested logistics for operations against advanced adversaries, particularly in maritime environments. Yet dispersion also creates vulnerabilities: ACVs, radios, drones and sustainment nodes all produce signatures. Survival inside an enemy weapons envelope will depend not simply on spreading forces out, but on mobility, deception, signature management, resilient networks and rapid displacement.

From Force Design to Deployable Naval Combat Power

The Navy-Marine Corps connection remains central to making that model work. During the 26th MEU’s June amphibious training, ACVs conducted shore-to-ship operations with Kearsarge, while Marine aviation elements operated from both Kearsarge and Arlington. The exercise was specifically intended to improve Navy-Marine Corps mobility and integration for aggregated or disaggregated operations. This places the Sept. 16 raid in a larger context: the ACV is the landward component of an amphibious combat system in which Navy ships provide the mobile sea base, aviation supplies speed and reach, surface connectors move additional combat power, and the landing force carries the fight ashore. The value of the ACV is not that it replaces other connectors, but that it extends protected maneuver from the maritime domain toward inland objectives.

The Camp Lejeune rehearsal consequently offers a glimpse of Force Design becoming operational inside a deployable MEU rather than remaining primarily an experimentation effort. Across its 2026 work-up, the 26th MEU has connected amphibious shipping, ACV mobility, mechanized infantry training and company-level precision fires into an increasingly distributed combat architecture. The individual training events remain distinct, but together they point toward a U.S. Marine landing force designed to arrive from the sea, disperse rapidly, sense farther, strike with greater independence and reposition before an adversary can effectively respond. For the 26th MEU, the ACV is emerging not simply as the vehicle that gets Marines across the shoreline, but as one of the platforms helping turn the amphibious force into a faster, more survivable and more lethal raiding formation for the contested littorals of the future.

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Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group

Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.