Keep an eye out between Oklahoma and Virginia over the next few days. The LAV-AD is headed to Quantico!
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That is awesome. 
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With upgrades, I still think the LAV-AD concept is valid. Too bad they don’t make the LAV version Zero anymore as the LAV GEN III is larger and thus heavier.
The USMC ARV and ACV can use an air defense turret…
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The Army took it and ran with it. Put a different gun on it and a radar and the new Stout SHORAD Strykers are in service now.
Marines are going in a different with ground based air defense, but still pretty cool.
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NIce. It looks good. Can’t wait to see it next time I am in the area, and I go by the museum.
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Going on public display ?
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Goes to show how old the USMC LAV-AD actually is…no LAVA2 modifications with bolt-on MEXAS ceramic armor to increase the armor protection from 7.62mm to 14.5mm AP as there are no bolt heads and washers on the hull at all.
Jane’s Defense ran an article in the 1990s that stated the 25mm Gatling gun on the LAV-AD is more effective that autocannons because a Gatling gun will spread the bullets into a circular pattern to bracket the target (in that case two paper targets of a Mi-24 Hind image head-on) compared to an autocannon that is so precise that it punched holes into the Mi-24’s silhouette. Thus, if the Hind was to take evasive action, the bullets will miss it and fly past where it used to be because bullets take time to travel. The 25mm Gatling gun showed all these holes around the silhouette with some impacting the image itself.
Nowadays, Defense stories are often short, don’t show any photographic testing evidence at all after post-9/11, and there are few printed Defense magazines existing.
Very nice photos indeed of the LAV-AD…you definitely don’t see that USMC air defense vehicle posted online much at all, and I doubt that it will be resurrected because the LAV-AD’s turret is only armored to 7.62mm whereas 14.5mm AP is the USMC’s armor standard these days, resulting in newer, bigger, and heavier USMC vehicles like the Amphibious Combat Vehicle and upcoming Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle that the US Navy amphibious ships have to transport (this too big and tall USMC vehicles criticized some active and former Marines).
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It will eventually go on exhibit, but we have a little work to do both on it and on the location it would eventually inhabit. Probably within a year or two.
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