Marine Aviation Plan 2016

[spazsinbad]

There is a Marine Aviation Plan 2016 out there according to Janes to I'll look for it {& found it]:

http://www.slideshare.net/robbinlaird/u ... -plan-2016 (9.3Mb) [This link is to the same PDF below by 'gabriele']

USMC plans for tacair transition, seeks to improve readiness
02 Feb 2016 Marina Malenic

"Key Points
• The USMC is working to maintain the readiness of its legacy fleets as it continues acquiring new aircraft
• The cost of maintaining older aircraft and acquiring new technology simultaneously has stressed the corps' budget

The US Marine Corps (USMC) is working to maintain readiness of its legacy fleets as it continues acquiring new aircraft such as the Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, the Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion, and several types of light helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the coming decade.

"Our deploying squadrons achieve readiness 'just in time', but our next-to-deploy and non-deployed squadrons do not have the resources to train for the fight tonight or for the fight tomorrow," Lieutenant General Jon Davis, the USMC assistant commandant for aviation, wrote in the introduction to the USMC Aviation Plan 2016, released on 28 January. "I am concerned with our current readiness rates, both in equipment and personnel."...

...Tacair
The corps plans to consolidate its Harriers on the US east coast by 2021, with all its F/A-18 Hornets consolidated on the west coast by 2027, according to the plan...."

Source: http://www.janes.com/article/57636/usmc ... -readiness

ANOTHER BIT HERE: http://www.combataircraft.net/view_arti ... #continued

[gabriele]

There definitely is, i can give you the link: http://www.slideshare.net/robbinlaird/u ... oad_digest


The USMC schedule for the F-35 has changed quite a bit from last year. F-35C squadrons will begin to appear somewhat later, with priority given to standing up F-35B squadrons. Also, there are changes in the allocations: squadrons that last year were looking at the C are now aiming at the B and so along.
Times and numbers for the wider transition haven't changed, though.

[hurricaneditka]

Slide 43 refers to "L class carrier[s]". I wonder if that's going to ruffle some Navy feathers.

[spazsinbad]

Bill Sweetman needs to 'get this' - MARINES are sea-based - not land based & they (USN/USMC) mean it....

Commandant Working On Closer Integration Of Carriers, Amphibious Forces
04 Feb 2016 Megan Eckstein

"CAPITOL HILL – The commandant of the Marine Corps and the chief of naval operations have been discussing how to design a more effective naval campaign that leverages both the carrier strike group and the amphibious ready group to fight a near-peer competitor, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told USNI News on Thursday....

...“Your Marine Corps is first and foremost a naval combined-arms expeditionary force, and we are strongest as a fully integrated Navy-Marine Corps team, so we are going to man, train and equip and educate the force for that role,” he said. “This requires more than just amphibious lift – the term amphibious lift denotes transportation. Marines ands sailors need to operate from the sea in the 21st century.”

Neller told USNI News after the event that he and Richardson are looking to revive the Navy-Marine Corps relationship that made the team so successful in the Pacific during World War II, and adapt that operational concept to apply to today’s potential adversaries.

“What Adm. Richardson and I are talking about is how, in the context of a naval campaign against a near-peer competitor, how would we project naval power – whether it’s setting conditions, whether it’s the strike mission, whether it’s putting a landing force ashore. How do we do that as a naval force?” he said. “As opposed to, in the past, carriers did their thing over here and the amphibs did their thing over here. We need the Navy – if there’s a requirement to put a force ashore, they are the ones that are going to help make the conditions for us to do that and make us successful, just as we’ve done in our history.”

Rather than the Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) acting as an independent unit responding to a crisis on its own, Neller said he and Richardson would rather see the carrier strike group or independent-deployers participate in long-range strike from the sea, electronic warfare and other condition-setting activities to support the Marines preparing to go ashore.

Similarly, Neller said he wants to see amphibious forces participate in missions outside of traditional amphibious operations. The introduction of the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter next year will bring a fifth-generation capability to the Marines several years before the F-35C carrier variant hits the Navy. He said that previously, in a crisis, people would look to the aircraft carrier to respond. Now operational commanders are more and more looking to the Marines’ long-range MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, and “now, with all due respect to the carrier strike group … the next question’s going to be, where are the F-35s, the B. Where are those Marine jets?”

Director of Expeditionary Warfare (OPNAV N95) Maj. Gen. Chris Owens told USNI News in December that he too through the fleet introduction of the F-35B would force closer Navy-Marine Corps collaboration.

“As you look at having fifth-generation fighters aboard amphibious big decks before we have them aboard CVNs, how do we pair up the amphibious big decks with the carrier strike groups to provide that fifth-generation capability to the larger fleet and integrate with the fourth-generation capability that is resident on the CVNs?”

Neller said amphibious exercises this year – Bold Alligator on the East Coast, Dawn Blitz on the West Coast, Rim of the Pacific in Hawaii [RIMPAC] and Ssang Yong in South Korea – would begin experimenting with how to better coordinate between carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups."

Source: http://news.usni.org/2016/02/04/command ... ous-forces

[spazsinbad]

Just got around to reading the USMC Aviation Plan 2016 see URL above to extract the graphic below....

http://www.slideshare.net/robbinlaird/u ... -plan-2016 (PDF 9.3Mb)

[spazsinbad]

F-35 Fighter Jet Flaws Can Be Overcome, U.S. Marine General Says
17 Feb 2016 Rachel Chang

"The U.S. military remains confident that any operating flaws in Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter jets -- the costliest U.S. weapons program -- will be rectified, according to a senior Marine Corps officer.

“We are operating the airplane, training in the airplane, making us ready to deploy to the Pacific,” Lieutenant General Jon M. Davis, deputy commandant for aviation, said Wednesday in a briefing on the sidelines of the Singapore Air Show. “We have developed workarounds to get around any deficiencies we have seen out there. Right now, operating capabilities and advantage we get from this airplane far outweigh any deficiencies.”

The F-35 program has long been the subject of scrutiny for its ballooning costs and production delays. The Marine Corps became the first U.S. military service to declare "initial operational capability" for the jets, despite a spate of highly publicized deficiencies found in tests conducted by the Pentagon. An initial deployment of pilots alongside 10 aircraft will be relocated to Japan starting January 2017, with another six scheduled for July of that year...."

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... neral-says

[popcorn]

Navy and Marine brass testifying before Congress. On F-35, the attitude is upbeat with the primary concern being sustainment, eg. sufficient inventory of spare parts. Also welcome revelations on the F-35B's ability to operaten in an austere opedating environment. Mention of exercises with the F-35 providing CAS under adverse conditions ie. heavy overcast against a surface-to-air threar system and also a counter-air scenario vs. a superior number of advanced threat aIrcraft.. good guys dominate. Around 10 minutes starting at the 40-min mark.


https://youtu.be/os5V-72I2rg

[spazsinbad]

That 8min 18sec excerpt below:

[spazsinbad]

Amongst other things DEW Distributed Electronic Warfare USMC style, LtGen 'Dog' Davis Brief to Williams Foundation 2016

http://www.slideshare.net/robbinlaird/l ... ch-17-2016 (PDF 9.2Mb)

FROM: http://www.sldinfo.com/the-deputy-comma ... rps-style/

[spazsinbad]

The Deputy Commandant of Aviation Down Under: Plan Jericho Marine Corps Style
19 Mar 2016 Robbin Laird

"The Williams Foundation hosted a seminar on new approaches to air-land integration.

The terms of reference for the conference were as follows:

"Air forces need to be capable of delivering air and space power effects to support conventional and special operations in the land domain.

Air-Land integration is one of the most important capabilities for successful joint operations.

The last decade has seen a significant shift in how airpower has supported ground operations.

With the introduction of systems like Rover, the ability of airpower to provide precision strike to the ground forces saw a significant change in fire support from a wide variety of air platforms.

Precision air dropping in support of outposts or moving forces introduced new capabilities of support.

Yet this template of air ground is really focused on air support to the ground whereas with the shift in the global situation, a much wider set of situations are emerging whereby the air-ground integration approach will become much wider in character, and the ability to insert force rapidly, as a precision strike capability, and to be withdrawn will be a key tool in the toolbox for decision makers.

Fifth generation enabled operations will see a shift to a distributed C2 approach which will clearly change the nature of the ground-to air command system, and the with the ability of fifth generation systems to generate horizontal communications among air assets outside the boundaries of a classic AWACs directed system, the change in C2 will be very wide ranging.

The seminar will explore how the ADF can take advantage of Army’s Plan Beersheba and Air Force’s Plan Jericho to enhance Air-Land integration.

Quite obviously, the evolving capabilities of the USMC are clearly convergent with the approach, which Williams wished to foster for the future of the ADF.

Lt. General Davis highlighted at the beginning of his presentation that when he attended the Avalon Air Show and then head of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) introduced Plan Jericho, it was clear that the Marines and the RAAF were on the same page.

“I went back to the Commandant and said that we need to work more closely with the RAAF because with Plan Jericho they are onto something big with regard to innovation.”

The presentation was hard hitting, comprehensive and clearly on target for the Australian audience.

As Air Commodore Steve Roberton, Commander Air Combat Group and a former exchange officer with the USMC, commented, “If you think this was hard hitting, it was mild compared to some Marines.

The Marines are gung ho about the future and shaping new combat capabilities.

They do no like to lose.”

This theme was central to Davis’s presentation – the entire point about combat innovation was to be the best force, which America could deliver to any global crises at any time.

“We want to be the best partner to our friends; and the most feared enemy of our foes.”...

... [Davis] His point was that you needed to get the new equipment into the hands of the Marines at the earliest possible moment, because the young Marines innovate in ways not anticipated when the senior leadership gets that equipment to them.

The Marines like at risk differently from the cubical commandos.

I recall a conversation I had with a well-known and oft quoted aviation analyst [BS?] who told me that the Marines should have waited few years before using the F-35B because doing so now was “risky.”

I pointed out that it was inherently risky flying legacy aircraft into ever more challenging conditions than getting new equipment into the hands of Marines who would innovate rapidly in ways that could not be imagined in the chat corridors Inside the Beltway.

Davis provided several examples of innovation, but one was about the F-35. He argued that there was no doubt that the F-35 is the right plane for the USMC. Now that it is in the hands of Marines, they are innovating in ways which the leadership really did not anticipate and much more rapidly than might be imagined....

...The DCA [Davis] noted throughout his presentation that the RAAF focus on bottom up innovation with the Plan Jericho processes was what the Marines felt was central to real combat innovation.

And shaping the way ahead was really about leveraging the new platforms, shaping key enablers and then ensures that whatever follow-on platforms are bought that they build upon but push the innovation envelope....

...His version of the Plan Jericho approach to building a more integrated assault force was as follows:

Every platform a SENSOR, every platform a SHOOTER, every platform a SHARE/CONNECTOR, and every platform an EW NODE.

And throughout he highlighted that the Marines were preparing for the high end fight and enhanced capabilities to operate throughout an expanded maneuver space, and able to operate from land, and sea sequentially, concurrently or jointly as the mission demanded.

With regard to equipping that force, he saw the need to build on fifth generation capabilities, multi-mission everything, spiral develop everything and leverage bottom up combat innovation.

He concluded that he saw a great opportunity to work with an ADF in transformation as the Marines went down a similar path."

Source: http://www.sldinfo.com/the-deputy-comma ... rps-style/

[spazsinbad]

Wrapup: HASC Passes FY2017 Defense Bill With Reagan-Era Spending Levels
29 Apr 2016 Megan Eckstein

"... • A provision in the bill asking about F-35B integration on amphibious ships and requesting a report detailing “the F-35B deployment schedule, the proposed amphibious ship modernization plan, and the proposed integrated communications architecture that is being developed to support F-35B.”..."

Source: https://news.usni.org/2016/04/29/wrapup ... ing-levels

[yeswepromise]

Marines, so....
VMX-1
http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/ ... 78-004.JPG
http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/ ... 78-016.JPG

[spazsinbad]

First photo above zoomed to USMC F-35B VMX-1: http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/ ... 78-004.JPG

Then Zzoooomed tuther one: http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/ ... 78-016.JPG

[yeswepromise]

Pretty sure it is BF-15 by the way.

[popcorn]

The Corps will make do with Harriers a little bit longer and focus on transitioning Hornet squadrons to Lightnings.

https://news.usni.org/2016/05/13/usmc-e ... erspective