After chronic problems with technology and cost overruns, the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle may actually have been steered onto the right path.
Existing prototypes suffered significant hydraulic and electrical problems, and there were issues with the feed and eject systems of the main gun, EFV Program Manager Col. Keith Moore told a group today at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space symposium.
For all intents and purposes, however, the EFV was bascially put back on the drawing board as designers sought to tackle issues that put its costs up and its schedule behind.
“It’s a complicated vehicle, with a lot of high-pressure hydraulics,” Moore said. “We had a lot of problems with leaks and contamination … and so there was early failure of hydraulic parts.” The electrical system being developed for the problem prototypes was too much of a reach, he said: “some cutting edge technology that … just wasn’t ready for prime time.”
The prototype now under development will rely on some earlier, reliable technology aided by software modifications. The hull to the prototype being built to the new design will begin detailed integration and assembly at the end of this month, he said.
Highly accelerated vibration and heat testing has been performed on the new systems, he said, and thus far they show great promise, lasting two or three times longer than reliability predictions indicated they would.
The problem-plagued EFV was supposed to reach its demonstration phase by 2001. It finally went to operational assessment in 2006, but suffered a number of failures and breakdowns. Moore said the EFV now will go into Initial Operational Testing and Evaluation sometime in 2015.
Marine Commandant James Conway made a strong pitch for the EFV on the first day of the Navy League, arguing that the service needs the speed and range of the system to ensure the Marines can still kick down doors — their primary mission.
The Corps' 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines said they needed it. Now Marines across the fleet are going to see a smarter -- and meaner -- air refueling capability.
Adding another arrow to its quiver, the Corps is moving quickly with an ambitious plan to arm one of the service's aviation workhorses with intel-gathering capabilities and a trio of weapons systems.
For less than the cost of an AC-130 gunship, the Corps plans to build for its fleet of KC-130J Super Hercules nine mission kits that will include an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensor, as well as three separate weapons systems, according to Marine Corps Maj. J.P. Pellegrino.
"We're not building a gunship, we're building a mission kit," Pellegrino stressed.
The Corps is not permanently attaching weapons to the plane, but is engineering a mission kit that will convert the normally static KC-130J into a deadly prowler in the sky.
Dakota Wood, a former Marine lieutenant colonel and a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the move to arm the air refueler will keep adversaries guessing.
"What you would like to do is keep the enemy off balance and complicate your enemy's defensive problem," Wood said.
The Corps envisions the system to work primarily as a surveillance tool, allowing the ISR sensor to feed-real time video to Marine commanders while the aircraft lingers over an area of responsibility, often refueling other aircraft.
Marine Air Ground Task Force commanders operating across Afghanistan currently have little to no persistent surveillance capability. The new mission kits will change that.
"We can operate day and night from very high altitude," Pellegrino said. "Say we have two airplanes in theater and I need extra ISR out tonight. While you are giving gas, you keep an area under surveillance."
And the diverse weapons portfolio included in the mission kit makes the upgrade especially lethal.
Plans call for a set of three weapon platforms: Four AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided air-to-surface missiles, a Mk44 Bushmaster II 30mm cannon hung out the left paratroop door, or precision-guided munitions dropped from a lowered rear ramp.
Together, the munitions provide the aircraft with a range of capabilities: precision-guided munitions to take out a house, but not the neighborhood, cannon fire to suppress approaching forces and a set of missiles to strike an armored vehicle.
The entire system -- ISR sensor and the three weapons -- would be manned by a fire control operator at a mobile, roll-on/roll-off control terminal.
Currently, the Corps plans to pull weapons systems officers from the F/A-18 community.
Long term, a separate military occupation specialty will be developed that may even be open to senior noncommissioned officers, Pellegrino said, but for now mission urgency demands wizzos camp out in the back of a refueler-transport to man this new system.
From origin to implementation, the move to create these mission kits has been remarkably fast, especially by government standards.
"We're moving as quickly but safely as possible," Pellegrino said.
Last year, 2/7 deployed to Afghanistan aiming to train Afghan forces, but quickly became absorbed in fighting, largely off in rural outposts and far-flung valleys.
"They were in distributed ops, small units throughout the countryside, and they started sustaining casualties," Pellegrino said. "Commanders asked, 'How can you give us some sort of enduring (surveillance) capability so we know what's going on out there.' "
Commanders in Afghanistan forwarded an urgent universal needs statement asking Corps planners to engineer a kit that could keep an eye on Marines under threat far from garrison. And it'd be nice if it could kill bad guys, too.
The Corps is working with Naval Air Systems Command and industry partners to design the kits. They're building them now and testing is expected to launch in June.
Three of these mission kits are expected to be ready by the end of this year, with two headed straight to the field and one reserved for training. The plan is to produce nine kits -- three for each air refueling wing.
"It's always the adaptability of the force and the innovation of the people that gives you a winning edge over your competitor," Wood said.
-- Bryant Mitchell
New Marine Recruiting Commercial
Marines are legendary for their ability to improvise, adapt, and think on their feet. No war plan survives first contact with the enemy -- that sort of stuff. So it's interesting to see that the famous Marine adaptability translates comfortably from the battlefield to their marketing campaigns. Witness the latest USMC recruiting commercial, superbly done and clearly targeted at young men and women who -with the economy being as it is- no longer have post-college civilian sector jobs to count on.
--John Noonan
Japan Sees Major Basing Change
U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units in Japan are engaged in a massive shift of bases and buildup of facilities as part of the planned realignment of U.S. bases and forces.
As part of the realignment, 57 carrier-based aircraft of Carrier Air Wing 5 - assigned to the carrier Kitty Hawk (CV 63) - and about 3,800 Navy personnel and their family members will be relocated from the Atsugi Naval Air Facility in Kanagawa Prefecture to the Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Also, 12 KC-130 Hercules tanker-cargo aircraft from marine squadron VMGR-152 now at the Futenma base on Okinawa will relocate to Iwakuni. That squadron has about 350 Marine personnel. It is not clear whether the Navy’s light anti-submarine helicopter squadron HSL-51, which provides SH-60F/MH-60R Sea Hawks to surface ships based in Japan, will also shift from Atusgi to Iwakuni.
About 50 U.S. Marine aircraft and 6,000 U.S. personnel and their family members are now located at the Iwakuni base. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force also has aircraft based at Iwakuni. Under the realignment the total of U.S.-Japanese aircraft at Iwakuni could reach some 150.
Under agreements between the United States and Japan, the Japanese government will pay for most base improvements at Iwakuni. This will include new operations facilities, aircraft parking aprons, billets for unmarried personnel, schools, leisure facilities, storehouses, fuel depots, and munitions storage. With the recent relocation of runways at the base, the Japanese government has already spent 240 billion yen. The realignment will also cost the U.S. government several hundred million dollars.
The carrier Kitty Hawk, which operates Carrier Air Wing 5, is based at Yokosuka, the only U.S. carrier that is home ported outside of the continental United States. She will be replaced in 2008 by the carrier George Washington (CVN 73), now based at the Norfolk naval base. The Kitty Hawk, completed in 1961, will return to the United States and be decommissioned. She is the last oil-burning CV-type carrier in U.S. Navy service.
Yesterday Defense Tech reported a little-noticed line in Vice Adm. Eric Olson’s written testimony regarding the career path for Marines in special operations forces.
DT readers will remember that one of the main selling points – particularly for opponents of the new MarSoc force within the Corps – with the service’s entry into the spec ops world was that once Marines finish with a stint in the snake eater world, they’d return to the “regular” Corps with new knowledge, tactics and specialized skills that could help make mainstream grunts better.
But Olson’s answer to lawmakers that he wants a “spec ops for life” career path for Marines – like the other services – flies in the face of that logic.
MarSoc officials have backed away from that earlier argument, saying instead that, although Marines assigned to MarSoc may serve in the command for longer than the usual three-year assignment because of the training investment, the service wants to make sure Marines who do a stint there are competitive for promotion; meaning they still need to do “Marine” things to advance in the Marines.
Here’s a statement from MarSoc spokesman, Maj. Cliff Gilmore:
MARSOC is working with Marine Corps Manpower to determine the best model for personnel assignment and career paths within MARSOC and the SOF community. Our intent is to balance three factors: First, we must ensure we build and maintain our SOF capabilities; Second, we must ensure a good return on time and money invested to train SOF personnel; Third, we must ensure our Marines remain competitive for promotion within the Corps.
Because it was given such short shrift in Olson’s testimony, maybe the issue won’t come to any kind of conflict. But there is a lingering doubt within the “legacy” SOF that the Corps special operators are “immature” and inexperienced. One thing the old SOF has been proud of is the maturity and experience of its personnel, the kind of expertise that comes only from spending an entire career in the community.
Will the Corps be willing to give up its best leathernecks forever? I’ll bet that will be a tough sell.
The Navy/Marine Corps team used their LCACs (Landing Craft, Air Cushion) in an unorthodox way during the recent brushfires on Santa Catalina Island, about 20 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. The military knew the quickest way to get vehicles over to the island was by LCACs from Camp Pendleton Marine Base down in San Diego County, so they offered their services to the local firefighters. Resultantly, they were able to quickly bring lots of fire equipment into the fight in a hurry.
All told, the sealift delivered close to 50 fire engines to the island (six per trip). Along with the air-tanker support (both fixed- and rotor-wing), the fire was just barely kept out of Avalon, the only town on the island.
