I've watched the USMC struggle to come to grips with its armored vehicle issues. I've watched as programs are delayed or cut, infantry and support battalions cut and Marines with several combat tours forced out of the Marine Corps.
All this could be said to be part of the price of the wars on terror and now that those wars are winding down this is to be expected.
Except that with all the cuts going on the Marine Air Wing continues to grow and despite the Marine Corps becoming smaller...despite the number of battalions being fewer than anticipated, we see the same number of programmed Marine Aircraft being purchased. Worse. The aircraft we're buying aren't cheap. They're high dollar items that are breaking the Corps.
Lets take a look at the cost of Marine Corps aircraft....
CH-53K --- 115.9m
AH-1Z --- 31m
UH-1Y --- 26.2m
MV-22 --- 67m
F-35B --- 196.5m
KC-130J -- 62m
This is unaffordable during the best of times. Obscene during sequestration and is a threat to the Air-Ground Team that is the hallmark of the Marine Corps.
I vacillate between believing that Expeditionary Force 21 is an attempt by Amos to build is legacy and believing that EF21 is designed to justify an air wing that would never be tolerated by Marine Greats.
The Marine Corps should take a procurement holiday and determine whether it is buying too many aircraft for the missions its expected to accomplish. As I said earlier. No one has ever adjusted the number of aircraft requested to meet the new reality of a smaller Marine Corps.
That is unsat.
Next, the Marine Corps needs to determine whether its aircraft that are being bought actually fit strategy.
EF21 supposedly pushing the Landing Force up to 100 miles offshore. If thats the case then the AH-1Z and UH-1Y are no longer viable as air support platforms. They will be on the very edge of their fully loaded combat range.
Aircraft numbers and mission sets. That is something else the next Commandant must look at when it comes to fixing Marine Corps aviation specifically and the Marine Corps in general.
26.2 million flyaway cost for a UH-1Y? The USMC is getting ROBBED.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/UH-60-Black-Hawk.html
Price/Cost: In FY 2014, The unit cost of a UH-60M is $17.77 million (flyaway cost). The cost of the airframe is $11.86 million, the avionics package costs $719,000, the engines cost $725,000 each ($1.45 million total), with other costs making up the remaining $3.74 million.
No the Marines are getting a small volume custom force of helicopters. The Commandant was told that Bell could not provide these for $14 mill each flyaway. That was back under Bush Jr. First term I believe. Sikorsky was pushing for a Multi year, and the former Commandant felt the Marines would not benefit for using the same air frame as the Navy, what would become the MH-60S.
Deleteactually its even worse than that. if we had piggybacked off the Army's buy of the UH-60M and used that airplane as a replacement for just SOME of the MV-22's and ALL of the UH-1Ys then we would have MORE capability at a LOWER COST!
ReplyDeleteMarine Leadership is tied to a course of action developed more than 20 years ago and is unable to adjust to changing circumstances.
With precision munitions in the pipeline F35b should never have been considered. If the Marines are going ashore against reasonable opposition then there would be fleet carriers in play anyway. Look at what Vulcano and Excalibur 5in munitions can do now. Look at missiles like ATACMS. And then look at F35b. Nuts. F35b could have be spend on getting more precision munition systems to the front and keeping the fleet carriers going.
ReplyDeleteMv22 should be dumped for more Kilo and more conventional rotor lift. It moves too little. Its footprint is too large all in ways. And who needs the range anyway?
Overhere one of the reasons why it said that having separate air service is good is that it means air power doesn't get neglected. I used to site the USMC USN system as proof that isn't so. Now we are seeing concrete proof that it isn't so as air power procurement is going to ruin a ground service irrevocably. I can see in two decades time the USMC below 100,000 men. You won't need more ships because you won't have the troops to fill them.
Criminal.
thats exactly where we're going. HQMC is still putting out the lie that 175,000 is the floor. thats complete bullshit. in 5 years you're going to see 150,000 man Marine Corps and you still have to take out MARSOC and a much bigger aviation which means that we're probably looking at having fewer than 20 infantry battalions.
ReplyDeletethats not just a crime. that becomes combat ineffective for the set of missions assigned. forward deployed will become a joke.
And meanwhile the number of ships the Navy and Marines have to work with has been decreasing as well. If you don't have enough hulls to deploy large numbers of hovercraft and LCU the use of assets like the V-22 becomes of even greater importance.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you getting this particular price figure for the F-35B anyway? Just asking because of the seemingly endless amount of differing price figures out there.
How the hell did the UH-1Y ended up costing more than the UH-60M? I'm also left wondering how that AH-1Z price-tag compares to the AH-64E.
sorry about that. should have listed that in the story. all the numbers are from Wikipedia. i tried to run down the actual numbers on the F-35 through the program office but its like trying to nail jello to the wall. they're slick and slippery with the info.
Deletei was surprised by the UH-1Y....and VERY disappointed. the only reason why we supposedly stuck with that airframe is because it was a cheap alternative to the UH-60. we got made an ass by the manufacturer.