USMC for the future

(U.S. Marine, Vietnam, 1966)

Solomon is doing yet more exploring of where the USMC needs to go.

As an aside, the USMC (either via their marketing or reality), as a sub-service of the U.S. Navy, just passed a budget audit. Hagel handed out the award to The Corps. in front of the Hall of Heros in the Pentagon. This is like going into the battle for Hill FY2015 against the other services with extra ammo and fire support. Look! We have a diploma and you don't!

Perfect.

Timing.

That could almost be a Duffle Blog "story".

Yet the USMC, with all of its gold plated wants could come back to its origianal reputation. One that Solomon mentions in passing and I have long agreed with:

"Thats how the Marine Corps regains the trust of the nation. By demonstrating that we are once again good stewards of the taxpayers dollar....as well as a kick ass military force."

So, could the USMC improve its force structure?

Not by buying a $1B each thing like this.

I suspect that you could buy and sustain for years, 10 CH-47s for that. And have better, more reliable, scalable, results.

Here is what I recommend for The Corps in order to survive Operation: HASTINGS HAGEL 2015 and beyond.

1. Dump the F-35. It was a mistake. At this point, the USMC can claim it was grossly misled about the Just So Failed and move on. No one would think any worse of them given the extreme levels of failure in the jet. They put out the requirement for the STOVL Harrier replacement and the vendor failed.

2. The Marine Corps was a valuable institution before the fielding of STOVL jets. STOVL jets do not define a Marine.

3. If STOVL jets are so important, lay out a requirement for Boeing and Rolls-Royce to build brand-new spare parts, airframe components and engines for the existing Harriers to keep them flying until...oh...I don't know... 2060 or 2070.

Many threats still do not have the ability to take out the Harrier. Yes there is the IR issue but that is just the way it is. War is not zero-loss. Add to that a complete avionics mod to make the STOVL transition less cockpit workload intensive.

4. If STOVL jets are not worth that effort, then move on without them.

5. Remove the America-class ships from the USMC need. USMC can use point 1 above as justification. A $3B ship specifically designed to support the USMC without a well-deck is useless. Give them back to the Navy and let them deal with it.

6. Put in a new requirement to take existing classes of ships so they have a HIMARS precision rocket artillery capability on them to specifically support the USMC. High value and easy to do.

7. USMC fighting vehicles should include the following:

(a.)A new, inexpensive remake of the AARV. We cannot afford to put every soldier, sailor, Marine and airman in a billion dollar cacoon. The AARV brings people and materal ashore...good enough. Also, we will not be refighting a Tarawa operational plan because it makes no strategic sense to do so.

(b.)Remove the M-1 and replace it with refurbished M-60A3s. The benefits of this will be dramatic. The USMC can also afford to train with these because each one doesn't eat up 300 gallons of fuel per day. Also the M-60A3 is superior in operational movement: minutes per day of maintenance vs. hours per day. The M-60A3 is a drop in replacement for USMCs existing tank companies.

(c.) Take the lead on fielding some Regiments with refurbished M-113A3s. Including all of its variants. This vehicle will compliment USMC's existing wheeled vehicle plan nicely.

Soloman's quote that the USMC was (and should be) the service that shows how to give better bang for the buck cannot be emphasied enough.

And with that, even the Marketing Cabal inside the Corps will have marketing victory upon marketing victory.

And, The Corps will be ready to fight non-peer competitor Operation:USELESS DIRT ^(TM) wars (which makes up most of our fighting), when the Army (as a useful quick deployment force) is long cut to pieces for lack of budget-planning and lack of smart-force-structure thinking.