Marine-Air fast jet community is too expensive

The USMC-air will have to find a way to be thrifty in the coming hard budget times. Something that they used to have a history of doing when flying a very effective close air support aircraft, the A-4.

The A-4 was carrier capable. Today, for the kinds of wars the USMC has been fighting (Afghanistan) it would be good enough, thrifty and manageable once the threat was realized. It would be more survivable compared to its past with the ability to stand off some with precision guided weapons such as JDAM backed up by the LITENING pod along with modern avionics and defensive gear.

Leaving of course, advanced IADS for someone else to solve. The same idea which will have to be used with the F-35.

The A-4 was simple and always left the deck with guns. It was also not too expensive to lose.

Today, USMC-air is still stuck on the bad theory of STOVL fast jets. If the U.S. had a war and STOVL jets were not involved, no one would miss the hyped "capability". Recently, STOVL Harriers have been flying from very long hard runways. That is a pretty expensive pet-theory to support.

Look at the cost comparison of the "expensive" per-flying-hour costs of the USMC AV-8B Harrier on past deployments.

We will use a cost per flying hour of $18,900.


Scenario 1: VMA-513, 2002-3 Afghanistan deployment; 3763 flying hours for a total of $71M.

Scenario 2: VMA-513, 2006 Afghanistan deployment; 4519 flying hours for a total of $85M.

Scenario 3: VMA-231, 2003 Iraq deployment; 5158 flying hours for a total of $97M.

So how much would the F-35B STOVL cost per flying hour in these deployment scenarios? Well, it is expected that the F-35A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) variant will cost $35,500 per flying hour. The USMC F-35B could be more expensive per flying hour given its complexity and unique STOVL appliances. So a comparison will not be perfect. However consider the follwing:

Scenario 1: AV-8B/$71M, F-35B/$136M
Scenario 2: AV-8B/$85M, F-35B/$160M
Scenario 3: AV-8B/$97M, F-35B/$183M

That is a lot of gold-plating for a defective F-35 when comparing it to a faulty pet-theory of alleged value such as the AV-8B.

I would hope at sometime, the DOD can rationalize its tacair portfolio, because the United States federal budget is in a $16T cruise-climb powered by red ink.