Friday, September 15, 2017

This was predictable. The Daily Beast takes aim at the Marine Corps over the AAV fire...


I was waiting for the age of the AAV to be commented on by the news media after word of the vehicle fire came out.

My thinking is that some brave soul might wander onto the pages of Naval Institute or Proceedings or Sea Power and discuss it there.

I was wrong.

Daily Beast took a swipe.  Check this out.
Nor is it clear the Sept. 13 amtrac fire can be blamed on the aged vehicle. “I would be very surprised if this has anything to do with the age of the vehicle or any maintenance issues inside the Marine Corps,” Dan Grazier, a former Marine officer who is now an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast. “These vehicles run on a form of diesel fuel which does not generally just go up in flames.”
Grazier said he suspected a munition misfire was to blame for the fire. “This is really just speculation on my part,” he stressed.
But the GAO left no room for doubt when it declared the AAV “increasingly difficult to maintain and sustain.” In that regard, the vehicle has plenty of company. In 2017, the Marines have suffered a spate of air crashes that are at least partially attributable to old and worn-out planes.
It’s possible that an old, unsafe vehicle is at fault in the Sept. 13 accident. It’s also possible that a Marine made a mistake with some munition. Bad luck might also be to blame. “The investigation should answer all of these questions,” Grazier said.
Story here. 

A couple of things.  First I don't expect the findings, if it is the fault of an old vehicle, to be made public.  I no longer trust the ethics/morals/honesty of current Marine Corps leadership.  They've made it clear that they have an agenda and they will not let facts get in the way of what they want/decided upon.

Second is that they will continue to put lipstick on an old vehicle whose time has past.  The budget is a mess and the aviation situation almost guarantees that it won't be solved soon (got an article on the "side costs" of the F-35 and if the maintenance issue is as bad as I think we're in deep shit) with further buys of the plane up coming, the CH-53K waiting in the wings and the Wing convincing leadership that they suddenly need a tilt rotor UAV.

In essence the Marine Corps has an old vehicle on purpose.  Critics say that the Marine Corps is the Navy's Army.  They're wrong.  It's become the Navy's second Air Force.

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