Marine Aviation Readiness
How bad is maintenance in the Marines? Here’s a glimpse courtesy of Breaking Defense website and Lt. Gen. Jon Davis who testified before the seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) (1).
“Chronic maintenance problems with the aging F-18 Hornet are hobbling the Marines, leaving them with less than 60 percent of the strike fighters they need to conduct training and operations, the deputy commandant for aviation told the Senate this afternoon.
“I pulled up our readiness data just yesterday,” Lt. Gen. Jon Davis told the seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We have 87 aircraft that were mission capable.”
Now, you know that people are fudging readiness figures to try to look good. So, that 87 number is actually a lot less but we’ll take it at face value for purposes of this discussion. How many aircraft should the Marines have ready?
“How many Hornets should the Marine Corps have ready to go? Under the current, shrunken force structure, 150: a training squadron of 30 and 12 combat squadrons of 10 aircraft each.”
So, the Marines have 87 aircraft that are mission capable out of a requirement of 150. That’s not good. I wonder if that counts the F-35s that are only fictitiously combat capable? But, I digress …
There’s another, hidden, problem here. The number of aircraft needed is also fictitious.
“Until 18 months ago, that figure was 174 — 30 training aircraft and 12 squadrons of 12aircraft each — but the Marines decided to shrink each squadron to reflect the reality of insufficient aircraft.”
This is deeply disturbing. Rather than fix problems, the Marines are resorting to lowering the number of aircraft per squadron to appear better? I thought manning and equipment was determined on a strategy and operations based assessment of threats and needs, not simply setting an arbitrary number to try to make things appear better than they are.
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I note that the Marines are still ensuring an uninterrupted supply of funds for the purchase of new F-35s. Shouldn’t we be fixing and maintaining the equipment we have before we start buying new stuff? Weren’t we all raised to take care of what we have before we start asking for new things? The Marines neglect to maintain what they have and we reward them with new aircraft? Won’t they simply neglect to maintain those, too? Is this responsible care of taxpayer’s assets?
The Marines funding for new purchases should be cut off until they get their current aircraft up to 90%+ readiness and they demonstrate that they can take care of what they already have.
The Marines funding for new purchases should be cut off until they get their current aircraft up to 90%+ readiness and they demonstrate that they can take care of what they already have.
Heads should roll over this.
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(1)Breaking Defense website, “Marines Are Flying Only 60% of F-18 Hornets They Need”, Sydney 20-Apr-2016 ,
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