[TheDrive] The technology-packed Cottonmouth is competing to replace the aging LAV-25, but its future isn’t guaranteed as changes sweep the Marines.
Textron has delivered the first prototype of the 6x6 Cottonmouth wheeled amphibious reconnaissance vehicle to the U.S. Marine Corps. This is one of two designs competing to become the Corps’ next Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle or ARV. Variants of the winning ARV are slated to succeed the service’s four-decade-old Light Armored Vehicle, or LAV, family of vehicles.
Textron handed off the Cottonmouth prototype to the Marines on Dec. 1 at the privately owned and operated Nevada Automotive Test Center, located in Silver Springs in that state. The delivery signified the completion of contractor verification testing of the prototype’s “mobility, swim capability, vetronics integration, and C4UAS [command, control, communications, and computers-unmanned aerial system] mission capabilities,” which wrapped last August in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is also worth noting that the prototype delivered is actually the “second iteration of the vehicle informed by lessons learned from an original Alpha prototype vehicle and approximately 3,000 miles of testing,” according to Textron. 
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