The pics below are from Flyboy 104's Flickr Page. The guy gets around and if you have the time you should pour a little Jack Daniels Honey into your coffee, sit back and scroll through his entire catalog. Its definitely worth a look see...especially the military pics. As a sidenote, while the majority of the pics on this site are open source (the vast majority...upwards of 90+ percent) those that aren't need to be protected. By that I mean give the photographer credit.
There is something to be said that we need to represent the Marine Corps as a frugal organization. If we bought only off the shelf equipment and used platforms developed by other services how much would we save? Could we then say we are frugal?
ReplyDeleteNote that the USMC has agreed to operate four F-35C squadrons from carriers. So the Cs already in the pipeline can be dumped on the Marines as the Navy walks away. I think this is why the Navy agreed to procure far inferior V-22s for COD as a corrupt offset.
ReplyDeleteI think AM is missing the point: the JSF was supposed to be an aircraft that three services could fly. It is due to the mistakes of the program that all three service have wound up with a 'joint' aircraft so different and expensive that they each wound up with a unique plane that was anything but joint.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't revisited the National Security Act since.....1947. It is time to take a long look at the entire Five-sided Puzzle Palace and ask what service should do what again.
Air Farce should be looking at strategic strike and reconnaissance, ICBMs, NMD, Cyber, Space operations.
Army should be looking at tactical air, strategic and theater airlift and conventional ground forces.
Navy and USMC should do what they already do.
and SOCOM should be split off and formed into a fifth service dedicated to unconventional, long-term and small wars.
You are SO right!
ReplyDeleteI do disagree with you on the SOCOM point. They should firmly be under their respective services control. Many many reasons for that thought process of mine.
ReplyDeletethe special ops monkeys have been let out of the cage and only after several years of living under sequestration will the truth get out about them. first they're only raiders these days and raidering is the SIMPLEST of all missions. quite honestly you don't need special ops to conduct raids and anyone with even basic military knowledge knows this (well except against the MOST HIGHLY defended targets). next, people don't realize the tremendous cost of having these guys around. next you have to consider the TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF SUPPORT these guys require. finally you have to consider that against even the most basic, decently trained led and equipped conventional force they're dog meat.
ReplyDeletewhat does that mean? it means outside of some high profile missions in the Middle East they're not worth it. that's why they're pushing so hard to get with conventional units right now.
want to talk about a self licking ice cream cone? you're talking about modern SOCOM. the days of these guys being light, freezing at night and being pure dee snake eaters are long over. its all hollywood and myth.
I think I should highlight what I believe a Fifth service would do. The door-kicking raiders should be moved to their respective services and either called Rangers or recon elements that support the parent service mission.
ReplyDeleteThe new fifth service should be the ones who imbed with foreign allies or insurgent groups like the old Special Forces mission was designed to do. They would be the ones who do missions like the Afghanistan in 2001-2002 or the guys who are training/leading the Kurds to kill ISIS right now or train the Philippine military to fight Moros. Their goal would be use as small a force as possible to defeat the enemy while knowing that there won't be any conventional forces deployed alongside them to avoid mission creep. If Special Forces can't defeat the enemy, then we don't fuck with it.
well lets look at what SOCOM does in the modern age. they don't train foreign forces. many times they don't embed with foreign forces. remember Rummy pushed that task to conventional units. additionally while the USMC retains Recon and Scout Sniper Platoon the US Army has moved to its Scouts and UAVs to do battlefield recon.
ReplyDeleteso to make a long story short the US military would be MAKING AN ENTIRE SERVICE (which is about 70,000 people but should be no more than 10K) that is dedicated to only one mission? we need 70,000 raiders? and those raiders need so much fucking support that it shuts down entire areas of operation because they happen to helo in? this new smallest service would then get a seat on the JCS? it would be as stupid as giving the national guard a seat!
sorry bud but the idea that SOCOM needs to be a separate service with its own administration, bureaucracy and such just rubs me all kinds of way wrong.
they had their time in the sunshine and everyone knows what happens next. they get sliced up just like everyone else.
its just the nature of things.
The Navy's Army has it's own Air Force is an old joke. But the question of why the USMC insists it needs vertical lift jets is still very valid. I would like to point out that the USMC existed just fine before the Harrier, and that the operational history of the Harrier has not been stellar.
ReplyDeleteIf you could swap Harrier for A-10 with the USAF on a one for one basis, would he? Why or why not? I think the answer depends on whether you prioritize supporting the boots on the ground or you prioritize operating off of a ship. If you prioritize operating off a ship, how do you explain the USMC operating C-130s? I think that clearly demonstrates the USMC has broken the code on using land based aircraft as part of their mix.
If you could swap a Harrier for an Advanced Super Hornet, would you? Why or why not? Would you make the same choice if it were an F-35? Why or why not?
Solomon wrote that the USMC needs vertical take off jets to make up for a lack of credible armored fighting vehicles for the ground forces. But that doesn't make sense to me since operationally the USMC has not been able to keep up with an Army ABCT in open desert warfare. Simply put, you can't rely on CAS to take the place of a tank when it comes to taking ground. Fehrenbach was very correct about needing boots on the ground. It seems to me that the boots on the ground would be better served by platforms other than vertical lift jets, but that the USMC seems to be wedded to the idea of vertical lift jets because it makes them unique.
The only Joint fighter to ever be worth a damn was the F4 Phantom. It was a Navy plane that the Air Force took the carrier parts off of and flew for decades (although the "Pardo Push" couldn't have happened except for the Navy features being used by an Air Force pilot). The F35 is failing for the exact same reason the F111 failed, it was designed for the Air Force first. It has proven impossible to modify an Air Force plane to work with the Navy in a cost effective manner twice now.
And lest I be misquoted, I'm not against the USMC flying fixed wing. I'm all for Hornets, Warthogs, Prowlers, and Growlers being flown by the USMC. At this point I'm against all vertical lift jets, by any service.
wait. so now its you're against the idea of STOVL jets. that's narrowing it down from fixed wing air in the USMC but i'll play along. but before i start dissecting this new question, answer my old one.
ReplyDeletewhy aren't you and other people advocating for the US Army to take on the A-10? why is it ok for the US Army not to have embedded close air support units operating at Army Air Fields but instead at USAF bases hundreds of miles away?
but back to your new question. of course the Marine Corps could operate only a conventional fighter force. of course the Marine Corps could "make do" if that was the case.
but the JSF and later F-35 wasn't presented in that light. lets do a quick history again. the USMC had a replacement for the Harrier under study. the USAF and USN had programs to replace aircraft currently in service under other programs.
THE US CONGRESS COMBINED ALL THE PROGRAMS.
your anger should be focused on the US Congress not at the Marine Corps. if you want a villain then point your rage at the right target. the USMC is NOT the cause of this mess no matter what people like Sweetman and others pointed out in the past.
the doctrine is simple and understood. you might sacrifice payload and range but the USMC decided that the trade-offs were worth it to have the flexibility of the operation off Navy LHD/LHA AND austere forward bases.
Colonel Dowdy's problems were brought on by incompetent leadership at the top that wanted to prove a point more than effectively fight a war. yes the USMC had trouble on the long march to Baghdad. but what's left unsaid and NEVER talked about is the fact that the US Army had trouble too. support units stretched from here to eternity and lets not even mention the Lynch affair that had a unit decimated because they pushed ahead so fast and so far that the bypassed enemy troops were able to engage support troops at their leisure.
additionally lets talk about rotary winged aircraft and the Army Aviation Brigade that got chewed up because it bought the hype and did a heliborne raid (all AH-64 gunship) into bad guy land only to be shot to pieces.
the F-35 is the bad guy. not the Marines. now tell me again why the Army shouldn't be flying A-10's again.
you didn't even read my post. I don't want a 70000 strong force of door-kickers. I don't want SOCOM doing business as usual with an unlimited budget.
ReplyDeleteit's gotten away from training foreign allies and embedding in with foreign forces/insurgents, etc., and been replaced by direct-action missions.
the old Special Forces mission is what SOCOM needs to be like so it can be the ones that fight the ISIS' and Boko Harams of the world.
i DID READ YOUR POST! i'm simply telling you what we have with SOCOM and what we will get if we allow them their own service. additionally the fact that they've moved away from those missions tells you that they DON"T WANT THOSE MISSIONS! you can't put the paste back in the tube. the USMC and US Army has already replaced those that do raid missions and the most difficult missions for conventional forces ... recon...are already well taken care of by other elite units or by technology.
ReplyDeletethe SOCOM MAFIA HAS WON. giving them an inch more will simply add cost.
US Army should already be procuring US-built A-29 Super Tucano by now, if they truly required a fixed-wing capability. Easy to maintain, which is what Army can handle. (not complex). Not to mention what would be a serious, game-changing and unprecedented capability for US Army.
ReplyDeleteUSMC should be taking delivery of around 90-100 cherry-picked A-10 which they could further upgrade to Marine specs, plus another procurement of 50+ F-18E/F ASH-lite to replace their ready-to-retire AV-8B II and geriatric legacy Hornets. God speed.
On the flip side of this. First the U.S. Army still...has to stop treating the Aviation branch like crap. If they did that (and since the USAF top leadership continues to do irrelevant things) , Army Aviation could be effective in lower key wars (most of what we fight) with Warrant officer as the front-seater and an NCO as the back-seater in Super Tucanos. And be effective. BTW, US Army management of their GA Gray Eagle UAVs is better (less overhead) that USAFs, GA versions.
ReplyDeleteThe Army will never get A10s. There are too many unintended consequences that would result in such actions. The air force would scrap them before they let them fall into Army hands.
ReplyDeleteSolomon, I didn't change my tune, you need to go back and read what I actually wrote, not what you think I wrote. "F35B" was right there in the title, and nowhere did I write that the USMC should give up on conventional fixed wing that it shares with the Navy.
ReplyDeleteThe doctrine of "sacrificing payload and range" to have flexible operations off LHD/LHA and austere forward be bases has NEVER happened off the the austere forward bases. Those concrete lilypads have never materialized, and the Harrier has never done "austere" well at all. The additional maintenance needs of the F-35B mean that it does "austere" worse than the Harrier. Conversely the A-10, AH-1, AH-64, actually do austere and are a better fit for supporting ground troops. Your continued insistence that the USMC die in a ditch needs VTOL jets despite decades of operational history showing how bad an idea that is is really frustrating.
The AH-64 "raid" you mention caused a doctrine change in the US Army. We no longer employ helicopters beyond the FLOT for the purposes of unsupported offensive maneuver. We didn't double down on stupid and insist the next generation of helicopters have more ammo, speed, armor and stealth to conduct raids all on their own. If we need to kill something beyond the FLOT from the air, we use UAVs now.
Colonel Dowdy's problem wasn't that the Army also had problems. The problem was that USMC leadership who fired him cared more about the USMC image than it cared about Marines. The logistics problems with the Army were felt across all the services, GEN Franks (an Army Officer) deliberately planned light logistics for the invasion of Iraq. There were consequences in a follow on "maintenance surge" after Iraq "fell" that caused a presence vacuum, specifically of heavy armor and aircraft, but it worked supporting the maneuver war. GEN Franks' quote, "Speed Kills, the enemy" and philosophy created logistic challenges all across the services, especially with the single system log pipeline.
It seems like the VTOL jets are to the USMC what the "airborne light armored formation" is to the US Army. A supposedly great concept that just sucks in reality because you have to make too many compromises on firepower to get the damn things in the air (or in the case of the Army, air dropped).