“Today, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft can’t fly.”
Fox News today has an article discussing USMC aviation readiness. Bottom line: not so good. The article’s “money quote”:
Out of 276 F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters in the Marine Corps inventory, only about 30% are ready to fly, according to statistics provided by the Corps. Similarly, only 42 of 147 heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters are airworthy.
No, that’s not 100% of USMC aviation assets. But it’s a big portion of them. And if the article is accurate, well, . . . .
Why? Well, for pretty much the same reason as during the Carter Administration. Then, we were just a few years post-Vietnam – and Carter cut the defense budget radically. (To be fair, that began under Nixon and Ford – but continued bigtime under Carter). Regarding similarities to the last 5 years or so . . . well, you do the math.
I wasn’t USAF, nor was I in Army aviation. However, I seem to remember folks in the late 1970s and 1980/81 making similar statements about USAF and Army aircraft readiness then. And “hanger queens” weren’t exactly unknown among other types of military vehicles and/or weapons systems during that time frame, either.
Looks like it’s, “Welcome back, my friends” – to the Carter Administration. But anyone with 3 or more working brain cells who isn’t a libidiot political apologist (and who hasn’t been living in a cave or on the moon) already knew that.
A second quote from the linked Fox News article provided the title above. That linked article is IMO definitely worth a read.
Just maybe wait to read it if your blood pressure is high today.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Defense cuts, Marine Corps, Military issues
The responsibility for budget cuts lies directly with congress. If they want more money for defense than pass a budget and by the way work more than 3 days a week and 9 days a month. I am tired of these lazy politicians in congress blaming everyone but themselves. The created this mess so fix it.
Obviously, you do not understand how the Federal Government’s budgeting process works.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/federal-budget-process/budgetprocess.pdf
The first step in the budgeting process occurs when the White House submits a budget request to Congress in February. While Congress routinely tinkers with those proposals, major changes to the DoD portion of those requests are not particularly common (there are changes, but they tend to be marginal ones – e.g., adding “pet projects” at at the request of various Congresscritters; they don’t tend to add or subtract that much overall). That’s especially true when the Joints Chiefs testify before Congress telling them that the President’s budget requests are “sufficient”.
Since 2010, responsibility for this one has been squarely on the current Administration. They’ve been the ones telling Congress how much money DoD needs to defend the nation. And they’ve been low-balling reality for years to fund giveaways in order to buy votes.
Not sure I completely agree. The Marines have a share of the blame here- they made some stupid program decisions over the past few years, and doubled down with some dumb maintenance practices.
The Norfolk paper (Virginian Pilot) has been doing a lot of reporting on this, and the Marines aren’t looking too good.
And who, precisely, has been the Marines’ CINC for 7+ years?
Email your congress people!! Shame the do nothing bas-ards!!
Not enough money for military readiness (Constitutional), but PLENTY of money for welfare entitlements and other LibTard wet dreams (UN-Constitutional).
Yer gonna “love” my article for tomorrow AM. (smile)
Please allow me enough time to get a cup of java ingested first.
It’s already scheduled. Up to you to make sure you finish that first cup before you click on the headline link. (smile)
The thing is, when you look at the budget process, you have what is called mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is required by law- Social Security, for instance.
The Defense budget is considered discretionary spending. The Constitution gives Congress the power to maintain a Navy and ‘Raise Armies’, and ‘appropriate money’ for no more than two years
True. However, “mandatory” spending can be modified or deleted by Congress simply by passing a law.
So “mandatory” spending . . . isn’t, really. If Congress wants, they can make it history.
The Marine Corps, at least on ther ground side, has its readiness and manning at three different levels. Deployed units maintain a high rate of readiness. The ones working up increase from about 60% to 90 just prior to deployment.
Units returning are pillaged for people parts and gear
Yep.. I remember those days when I was assigned to Marine units.
Had an old boss who was a crew chief on CH-46s back in the day – told me the airframe was far older than him and that there was so much splicing going on he didn’t think there was any original wiring left. Also told me some of the stuff they used to do to mess with the grunts. I’m sure he was just kidding…
No doubt they make sure the troops are all up to date on sexual harassment, White privilege and Microaggressions though. Those are definitely priorities over minor stuff like war readiness.
Unfortunately the USMC does not get the brand new toys when it comes to their Hornets.They get the hand-me-downs from the USN. You have to figure how many carrier landing those aircraft had been subjected to, let alone catapult launches.
Naval Aviation is tough on aircraft. I can only imagine how already tough it is for Marines to keep their sortie completion rates up…but to have budget cuts on top of that…I am willing to bet instead of one Hangar Queen they have three or more per squadron being used for cannibalization purposes.
Yes Hondo this sounds far too familiar…no rounds for training under Carter, all gear old and beat up…within months of Reagan being elected we were firing more live rounds regularly than for a long time previously.
My recollection is that it took until about the beginning of 1982 to see a real change. After all, most of 1981 was funded under Carter’s last budget.
But it’s been a while, so you might be right.
I EAS’d the Corps in ’85 and our annual rifle range ammo allotment was still cut in half at that time.
Most infantry training was running around shouting “bang” at each other due to no budget for blanks.
My last outfit, weps, 2/7 got tasked with creating jeep mounted .50 section.
There was no money for the pedestal gun mounts so the windshields were removed from the M151 jeeps and the .50 tripod tied to the hood with paracord lol. The front leg rested on the bumper, the back legs pushed up against the windshield hinges.
Iirc, after a test fire, two mods were added. An engineering stake was laid across the front edge of the hood to reinforce it (kept pinned in place by the front leg of the tripod resting against it), and wooden “tourniquet” twists were added to the tie down arraignment so after every few bursts, the driver could tighten the tie down cords.
Oh, and as a Dragon gunner, with 6 years in, only ever saw an actual live round fired once during a fireex at 29 stumps. It went wild weasel due to a broken guide wire, of course, but I wasn’t the gunner so no skin off my nose.
I remember someone once stole the General’s staff car and took it for a joy ride. When we got the car into maintenance it was so trashed we couldn’t get it started. We had nothing in the O&M funds so we couldn’t get parts to fix it. I had two spark plugs out taken which I took to a friend who had an abrasive blast cabinet. After blasting, resetting the gap, and with fingers crossed, it started. We adjusted what we could and back to the General it went. When I was asked if the General would be pissed his car wasn’t perfectly fixed, I said maybe he’ll think about this when budget time comes up again.
I remember back in like 77 or 78 at Cannon AFB, the 27th TFW had the F-111D and they grounded the whole fleet, their was an engine issue going on with them and every engine needed to be changed out for some major modification, and we had like only 6 flyable aircraft for months, not to mention the on going problem with the avionics, the HSI in particular, which was a no fly item…..Deja vu all over again….?
What a F!€£ing mess please hurry up and end…
🙁
??
Didn’t know that Deadline Reports were such publically available, at least not for an entire branch of the service.
Is that all you have to do? Walk into any local Public Affairs Office and say “Give me the latest copy of the Operational Ready Rates Report.”
I thought info such as that used to be somewhat sort of Eyes Only.
Oh, well, nothing like letting our enemies know just how ready we are to wage war against them.
My recollection is that it was classified back in the early 1980s. And for a divisional-sized unit or larger, not at the “Confidential” level, either.
That’s been 35 years now, so I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.
Have no idea what the policy is today. Haven’t worked USRs since the 1980s.
My understanding is now they’re cannibalizing parts for Navy nuke plants.
And when THAT happens, you know shit is bad.
As a former Aviation Ordnanceman who got out of the Corps last year, I can confirm the trend. There were never enough bodies to do the work and critical parts sat on order for months, sometimes more than a year. I spent most of my time working with the Maintenance Chief on the paperwork side of things (people comfortable with the computerized tracking and analytics aren’t terribly common in the MOS), so I saw a lot of the stuff going on under the hood. Contracts not being renewed, gear and parts getting shuffled all over the world to cover holes created by the same, shrinking budgets, and personnel numbers always way below requirements. Between that and the increasing pressure from social busybodies and their endless stream of briefs, I’m happy to be on my way.
I was in Navy aviation back in the Carter years. This sounds a lot worse. We had parts shortages, most squadrons had one hanger queen used as a parts locker, but could still get most a/c in the air. There were limits on flight hours but a lot more than 5 or 6 hours the Fox article mentioned. A major hit was during Med deployments and port visits stretched into 2 weeks. Really affected landing rates on the carrier, particularly at night.
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Prior USAF Aviation MX here, but the same problems in effect, if to a lesser degree: The birds are getting old, and that means it takes more man hours, more parts and more money to keep everything working. If you don’t have the budget and bodies…. you do a lot of cannibalizing. I worked C-130’s of several flavors, MH-53J/M’s and retired from Davis-Monthan with it’s A-10’s and HH-60’s.
Everything is OLD.
But they keep pulling money to fund the F-35…..
I was in the MC for almost 9 years active duty. I’m wondering why this is news? The MC has always been notorious for “doing more with less” (a.k.a. 90+ hour work weeks on the reg), low funding and old/broken equipment. This was even true during the Surge. So I can’t help but wonder why this is news now?