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 Leagues 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.

Its 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 wasnt 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.

– Bryant Jordan

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.

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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.

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 Navys 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.

– Norman Polmar

MarSoc Update:

Yesterday Defense Tech reported a little-​​noticed line in Vice Adm. Eric Olsons 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 ser­vices entry into the spec ops world was that once Marines fin­ish with a stint in the snake eater world, theyd return to the reg­u­lar Corps with new knowl­edge, tac­tics and spe­cial­ized skills that could help make main­stream grunts better.

But Olsons 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.

Heres 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 Olsons tes­ti­mony, maybe the issue wont 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? Ill bet that will be a tough sell.

– Christian

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.

(Gouge: MA)

– Ward