awards for successful cost and technology management. In June 1996, a contract was awarded to General Dynamics Land Systems to begin full-scale engineering development of their design. Based on the early success of the program, the Marine Corps awarded a cost-plus contract to General Dynamics in July 2001 for the systems development and demonstration phase of the program, expected to be completed by October 2003. The AAAV was renamed to EFV in September 2003. The Government Accountability Office would later state that the development phase of three years was insufficient, causing delays and prototype failures, particularly in reliability. After the 2006 Operational Assessment was plagued by reliability issues and maintenance burdens, the Corps began a redesign of the EFV, requiring a new contract for an additional in February 2007. That June, a reset of the development phase delayed completion by an additional four years. Instead of initiating production as planned, the corps asked for seven new prototypes, to address the current deficiencies, which have caused an average of one failure for every four and a half hours of operation. On 7 April 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the EFV program will "continue as-is", pending an amphibious review in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. The vehicle was called "exquisite", which Gates usually reserved for programs he intended to cancel. He later questioned the EFV as the proper ship-to-shore platform on 3 May 2010, the day before the initial prototype was rolled out at a ceremony at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The USMC had reduced the number to be purchased from 1,013 to 573 AAAVs by 2015 due to escalation in unit cost estimated at $22.3 million in 2007. The EFV might be a baseline vehicle for the US Army's BCT Ground Combat Vehicle Program, however it is more likely that the army will start a new program. Low rate initial production (LRIP) was projected to begin in January 2012. Projected total program development cost of the type until first quarter of 2010 was estimated at 15.9 billion dollars. Controversy Robert O. Work, while Undersecretary of the Navy sketched out a future for amphibious warfare in which either the Marines will land unopposed or it will take a major effort using all the long range weapons of the United States armed forces to clear out ship-killing missiles, so that amphibious ships can safely approach the hostile beach and neither scenario