AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
MARINE CORPS AVIATION: TODAY’S MILITARY READINESS CRISIS, TOMORROW’S CAPABILITIES
DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS:
JON DAVIS, US MARINE CORPS
DAVID DEPTULA, MITCHELL INSTITUTE
THOMAS DONNELLY, AEI
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2016
EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/marine-corps-aviation-todays-military- readiness-crisis-tomorrows-capabilities/
TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM
THOMAS DONNELLY: This is likely to be one of the final events at AEI’s current headquarters. As you all may have heard, we’ll be moving around the corner very shortly, very shortly. Looking forward to that very much. And this is a great turnout. And I’m very pleased to host this event at this time. The format — by the way, my name is Tom Donnelly. I’m the director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies here at AEI. And I’m very pleased to partner with Dave Deptula and the Mitchell Institute to bring you this event.
The topics today, the current readiness crisis and the question about fielding new capabilities, is kind of a microcosm of where the US military as a whole stands, sort of in a Scylla and Charybdis position between the deeds of the high pace of current operations today and the shrinking size of the force and the long-delayed modernization and recapitalization of that force at the same time. So I’m very much looking forward to having both a very specific and a broad-ranging discussion.
The program will proceed as follows: I’m going to introduce Dave, who’s going to give a further introduction of General Davis. I’m sharing the podium with two very distinguished fighter pilots. So the best thing for me to do is land my plane as fast as I can before I get either some rounds or a missile up my tailpipe. So in that spirit, I want to introduce my friend, Dave Deptula. I’ve known Dave for — my gosh — it must be about 25 years now.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL DAVE DEPTULA (RET.): I’ve forgotten.
MR. DONNELLY: Yeah. That’s right. Dave first rose to prominence as a principal planner of the Gulf War air campaign and as one of the leading theorists of modern airpower. But the thing that we most need to know about him is that he’s a lifetime F-15 pilot with more hours than God in various cockpits. His final job in the Air Force, not too long ago, was the head of the ISR Office there, so Dave has really in many ways, again, been the leading theorist and an architect of modern airpower. So I’m going to share much of the questioning with Dave, and I’m very pleased to do so.
So, Dave, the microphone is yours.
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: Thanks very much, Tom. And I’d like to add the Mitchell Institute to that welcome to all of you to this session. I promise you I won’t take too much away from our principal speaker, General Davis, but I’ll just give you a little bit of a brief overview. All of you know, he is currently the deputy commandant for aviation in the Marine Corps. And in the course of a very distinguished career, he’s flown over 4,500 mishap free hours in the AV-8, the F-5, and the F/A-18 and F-18EF. I don’t know how much EF time that you have.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JON DAVIS: (Off mic.)
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: In addition — and this is kind of interesting — he’s also flown as a copilot in every type model series of tilt-rotor, winged and air refueler aircraft in the Marine Corps inventory. He’s commanded at a variety of levels. He’s held a multitude of staff jobs. You know, if you want the specifics, you can go online. But I don’t want to take too much away from his time.
But it’s also interesting to note that he dabbled — I don’t know what it is about our service leadership but, you know, they take us out of having fun — maybe I need to reconstruct what I just said — and then put us into the intelligence community. So he served in his — one of his previous jobs, as deputy commander of the United States Cyber Command.
So, General Davis, with that, we look forward to your remarks. We’ve basically given him carte blanche but readiness obviously is an issue as well as integration of F-35 and how it is dramatically changing the way we conduct aviation activities in the military. So, dog, over to you.
LT. GEN. DAVIS: Thanks. Thanks.
MR. DONNELLY: Pleasure. (Applause.)
LT. GEN. DAVIS: I haven’t talked yet so I’d hold the clap until I’m done. Why did I go to Cyber Command? I think that just shows that God’s got a sense of humor, that a guy who could fail college math could do — I did two tours up there, once as a deputy commander for General Keith Alexander as the deputy commander of Joint Functional Component Command Network Warfare, kind of the offensive side of the ledger, and then went back for a (reattack ?) a few years later to be a deputy commander for United States Cyber Command. So I’ve got a lot of respect for the hardworking folks up there, both at Cyber Command and NSA and all the components that come together to bring that really essential mission forward.
I’m going to talk about — today, I’m going to talk about the future as well. You’ve read and I’ve been very open about what we’re doing for the readiness challenge in the United States Marine Corps unique in the Marine Corps. The 82nd Congress laid it out and recently revalidated by the last Congress that the Marine Corps is a force in readiness. So our design is small, small number squadrons but all those squadrons are supposed to be fully manned with people, with airplanes for express purpose, being ready to go, you know, break glass, go, we got out there, we’re ready to go.
After 15 years of hard fighting, the numbers of aircraft in up status aren’t where they need to be for that small force, small but very powerful force. So we’ve for the last couple of years been on a trek, I would call it. It’s a very focused mission to recover the readiness for every type model series we have in the United States Marine Corps. And I was in with the commandant this morning. You know, he’s got a Gantt chart that shows you that what we’re doing. We’re on glideslope right now to bring all those airplanes back. We first start with what they call the T-2.0, which is how we can train to get ourselves, to make sure that every single Marine, aviator, crew, squadron is ready to go out the door to meet our task and then also do what we need to get our war fighting formations back because that’s what you have. The Marine Corps is designed to fight our nation’s wars, be that forces in readiness, and it’s a function of recovering the old and get — extracting maximum value out of the old and then also to bringing in the new platforms, which I’m going to talk about next.
On the recovery effort, we’ve had great allies in Congress. They’ve actually helped us out. We told them exactly what we’re trying to do. We’ve asked for help in only amounts of money that we could execute, and we’re doing exactly that. I came off the vaulted T-2.0 of the United States Marines Corps because we couldn’t execute that right away with the inventory we have so we rolled some of that money back, we’re going to fund our money back into buying the parts we needed to bring the airplanes back up.
And we’re about — we started last summer at about 378 airplanes. We’re about 80 airplanes better than that right now, OK? So we’re absolutely, 100 percent on glideslope to recover. It’s not high science, but it’s darn close to it. And what’s important in this town and where I work and with the partners I work with is to be credible. And our recovery model is very credible right now. We’re doing exactly what we said we would.
And I look at it as a lifelong Marine rifleman, but also an aviator. The thing that I measure at the end of the day, I can go down look at flight hours per pilot and are we where we need to be? Yes or no because we’ve got training and readiness manuals designed to do that, and today we are better than we were last month and we’re better than the month before and the month before that and the month before that. So we’re getting better. We’re getting our guys to look at the ball they need, to make sure that they are that force in readiness when they go out the door. It’s the not just the guys that are getting ready to deploy. It’s every single unit in the United States Marine Corps ready to deploy. All right. So that’s our goal and that’s what we’re working on.
Next year, we’ll fly a T-2.2. The year after that, we keep pulling that down over to T-2.0 and then we’re a steady state operating force like we’re supposed to be, a couple of years off but we’re tracking towards that.
The new stuff — fixing the old and buying the new. We’re about — we’re almost through the V-22 transition, the United States Marine Corps. Fantastic. We’ll talk about that. We’re nearing the end of the H-1 transition Yankees and Zulus. We’ve got a couple more years there. C-130s, I still need to buy about 30 of those airplanes. CH-53s, the Kilo, that’s in test right now doing really well. That’s an incredible airplane. We’ll buy 200 of those.
So one thing about the Marine Corps, like it or not, we’re very consistent with our message, right, with our programs as a record, and we execute those and hammer those home and we’ll buy 200 CH-53Ks, all right? We’ll IOC in 2019. That airplane, the other day left at 27,000 ton external load, all right? And the airplane’s resistive strain gages kind of let you know how much is there. It’s designed to lift 36,000 pounds. We think we don’t have any problem doing that, all right? It’s really going well. We’re going very (fanatically ?) with that. We’ll IOC on time. We don’t see any show-stoppers there. So great airplane out there. It allows us to move our logistics equipment from that sea base ashore as we can build up combat power quickly. So very impressed with that.
The H-1s, Yankees and Zulus, we’ve almost completed our transition on the West Coast. We’re moving out to the Pacific and then back to the East Coast as we build out those airplanes, a great combat capability force. And like anything we buy, we buy it and we suit it up. So one of the things we’re going to talk about is connecting the force. It’s not just about buying the legacy gear but it’s also making sure that the gear we have can talk to everything else we have.
And I’ll tell you, for the United States Marines Corps, outside of our fighters and our electronic warfare planes, no one has been in Link 16 so we have not had a connected force. We’re changing that right now. The Harriers are about ready to get Link 16. And we’ll put that kind of capability in our C-130s, our V-22s and our tactical helicopters and in our heavy lift helicopters as well so we can communicate with everybody, share information and get everybody to that sensor-to-shooter.
The C-130J, we love it to death. We’re using the heck out of that airplane. We’ve got a number of those airplanes can figure as what we call a Harvest Hawk plane which started off in the war in Iraq with a request from General Conway to get a convoy escort with a long dwell out there, and the solution we came up with is kind of half tanker, half gunship Harvest Hawk. And it’s been a phenomenal success. Basically now we’re going to the kind of second increment of that. We’re putting an MX-20 ball on the nose of the airplane, Hellfire missiles, and also to the gravity drop, a small round of ammunitions but which I think it’s the money shot for Harvest Hawk, which allows us to go out and do a lot of great work out there and reconfigure that airplane very, very quickly. Also too, you can pack — take gas on the other side of the airplane, all right? So it’s a tanker, OK? And it’s also — it can rain death and destruction from on high.
So kind of the Marine model is we have — we’re not going to have a single mission anything. We’re going to have a multi-mission everything, right, multi-mission everything. If it can carry a gun, a weapon, we’re going to let it do that because I think there’s also a time and place where Marines find themselves in a bad spot where you need that fire. And the priority would be towards the precision fires out there, one shot, one kill, and given that — all those airplanes are sensored to go do that job.
V-22, phenomenal capability, probably the most in demand airplane in all of the DOD. We’re getting the airplanes off the production line. We’re having a very difficult time training the crews and mainly the enlisted maintainers to keep up with the demand for that airplane. We’ll get there. We’re going to do some improvements to the airplane but it’s been — the demand signal for V-22 is super high.
And an indicator that not just of the wear and tear in the airplanes but we have not had a Marine captain go to our expeditionary warfare school — it’s their mid-level school for captains — since about 2007. They don’t go. They get in V-22s, they stay in V-22s. They don’t do forward air controller tours which for the United States Marine Corps, if you’re an aviator, 1st battalion 8th Marines, OK? I was a forward air controller. A lot of guys, they don’t want to do that. That’s the difference about, you know, kind of that broader road with the Marines on the ground. We start at the base school for six months, all the aviators. That’s what I did. I actually, I joined the Marine Corps not knowing they had airplanes, OK? And now I’m running Marine aviation. That should scare a lot of you, all right? (Laughter.) That’s true. Absolutely. I knew I needed discipline. And that was the one spot I know I could do that. And I didn’t have the grades to get in the Navy. They were looking for science guys and math guys at the time, and I was not a science or math major as you know. So I flew with the Marine Corps out there.
But bottom line is being a forward air controller is an important part of every Marine’s — you know, guy that’s going to transit up through — when we look to promote people, we want people who have got that Marine air-ground task force depth and balance. And V-22 guys are V-22 guys right now. So we’ll watch out for them as they grow up. They’re doing great. We’re making general officers, but we want — what that tells me is we don’t have enough there right now to meet the demand of the airplanes that we have to go fly, so we’re working on that.
The next airplane — we’ll talk about our unmanned stuff but I’m going to talk a little about F-35 because that’s been the most in the news and it’s probably an airplane I’m really, really excited about. We just did RIAT Farnborough, and you’d think that’s not a big deal. But if you could see — I was at an air show in Singapore, and a Brit reporter came up and he goes, you’d better do a vertical landing at RIAT. I’m like — I said, I’m not sure — I’m sure we’re planning on doing that. But we weren’t’ planning — apparently, we weren’t planning on doing that. We were going to put some (tin ?) down. That’s too hard to do. We’ll just do a hover display. That’s good enough. This reporter’s like, we’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Don’t you dare show up here and not do a vertical landing.
So we looked at it, I said, what would it take to do that? And, frankly, typical of Marine Corps fashion, we turned it into a training opportunity. We have part of our wing engineers are Marine Winged Support Squadrons. They go build the aircraft carriers ashore, the tin that we put out in the middle of nowhere that allows the naval team to power project from a sea base and go ashore. It’s a great feat of engineering, one of our strategic assets we have in the United States Marine Corps.
So we took Marine MWSS guys that are MCIS Buford. We shipped the tin over on a ship. They got together with the Royal Army engineers. And I think they had a really good time over there but they laid some tin. They put tin down. I think they probably drank some beer out there in the local towns. But every day for RIAT, we did vertical landings out there and it was non-event. It was great. And so, bottom line, there’s some brotherhood out there with our British allies, probably some beer drinking out there as well but also some great engineering and they did it, and they’re on their way home now. But did RIAT in Farnborough, very successful. We had our Air Force brothers over there with the F-35A and the F-22. It was fantastic. It was great to see.
I could only stay for a little bit and watched it, but if you back up last summer with the initial operating capability decision, what we did to go do that, we knew we had a great capability out there. We stacked the deck with F-35 early on. We drafted a lot of (patchworks ?), guys — weapon school graduates, WTIs, top graduates to go into that airplane. The guys who flew that airplane and maintained the airplane were very, very hard graders. And I knew the CO personally that was out there. And so as we’re getting ready and we’re tracking — we had — all the things we had to do, the — (inaudible) — we had to get to to get through an initial operating capability decision, tracking that closely.
So we got up close to it. There were a lot of people out here in the press said, hey, the Marines are just going to declare IOC because as politically untenable. Not to do that. IOC of the Marine Corps means we’ll deploy that airplane to combat. That’s not a decision I was going to take lightly, nor General Dunford. So I went back to my Royal Air Force roots. I think I’ve got some RAF guys — I did an exchange when I was a young captain. We decided we were going to do an operational readiness inspection. We laid out what I thought was going to test these guys in every single mission profile they were supposed to fly. I gave a mission type — (inaudible) — about you design the test. And it turns out it was an academic exam. It was for both the maintainers and the pilots. It was a tactics exam for the aviators. They went and basically did all the scenarios and the simulator first because some of the scenarios you can’t recreate out there with some of the threats and the weather and all that especially in Yuma, Arizona. And then we went and did live all the events as well. Phenomenally successful.
Insights in the operational readiness inspection, we had one of the events, one events was a self-escort strike, and any airplane that went up against it got shot down, zero losses to the F-35. We’re seeing that a lot right now. We’re seeing that a lot. We just saw it in the last WTI, a 24 to zero exchange ratio, right? None of our guys got shot down and 24 of the bad guys did, unprecedented.
We’re also learning a little bit about how to fly and integrate this airplane as well. It does best when it’s out in front, doing the killing, all right, doing the killing, doing the scene, doing the killing and all that. But we saw that, it was a nine to zero in the strike and then it went into the strike, but the most interesting one to me was — we had a thing called — we always did it with our F-18s and our Harriers. We sent them out to go do an armed reconnaissance mission. We’d put them out in the objective area, we’d hide tanks and trucks and stuff that they had to go find, right? And even as instructor, we didn’t know where they were. They were just hard to find. You’re sitting there before we had targeting pods, you’re looking with binoculars, look with your eyeballs, we get targeting pods. They’d sort of how they’re going to find the targets out there. It took us a long time. Sometimes it took us all day to find out where all the stuff was, you find it, basically were met in the targeting matrix, you went and killed — identified it and killed it. Depends on how important the target was — (inaudible) — SAM or a ballistic missile or something like that.
These guys went out there and they found all the targets very quickly and then killed all the targets. Most importantly, we did as a division — we put a radar SAM out in the objective area. In the old days, we’d have to go take care of the radar SAM. We had to go take somebody in to go take care of that because you don’t armed reconnaissance, which is trolling for targets out there, unless you’ve got a permissive threat environment. You beat that threat down. These guys went out with the SAM in the area and went and did that and they killed the SAM. And it was like the pilots came back, well, we’re not so sure that was completely realistic. We wouldn’t really do that for real. We could do it. We could do it with F-35s but we don’t know how realistic that is. I’m like, never assume away a capability, right? They did it. They were able to do it. They were completely confident in their abilities to do it. That was the difference. And then that was last July.
Fast forward to this May, June, we went back out to — take our new commandant, General Neller, out to go take a look at the tactics and airplane, talk to the pilots, and I gave them two scenarios for this drill that they were going to run in the box. One was a very high-end, off-the-ship, go into the jaws of death, double-digit SAMs, fighter threat and go after a very — a strategic target on the ground, right? I watched them do that as force ship, which normally I would say B-13 or 14 airplanes, normally what I would do as a CO of the weapons school, which I was. And marginally successful probably with the threat that was out there, the fighter threat. They killed the fighters. They killed the SAMs. They killed the target. They came home. And made it look — it was most — it’s how they did — not what they did but how they did it. It was very much the maturation of the pilots and how they’re flying this airplane, how they’re using information, how they’re communicating each other, sharing information. It was more like watching a pack of dogs go after something. And it was force on force. It was force on force. It wasn’t scripted, force on force. It was incredible.
And then the scenario, I said I wanted it to show kind of what we can do cast through the clouds, through — so 1,000 foot overcast. And I want to see the airplane at its 3F configuration, I want to try that with the pylons. There’s a bomb truck because this airplanes carry about 3,000 pounds more than my legacy F-18s, 14,000 pounds extra ordnance. And as Marines we like — the first times out there, we want to carry a lot of bombs and go knock on doors. So they — you know, I’m out there. The commandant and the Marine Corps out there. I want to impress the commandant. And so the guys of this first scenario was awesome.
Then right before the second scenario, I said, are we ready to go? And this young major comes up, Hornet guy, former Hornet guy, now an F-35 guy, and he goes, we’re not going to do exactly what you wanted to do. I’m like — (laughter). He goes, we didn’t think the task was challenging enough. So we got two that are (slick ?), two that are lit up as bomb trucks. We can do the job, sir, don’t worry. We won’t — I say, is it force on force? Yes, sir, it is. So we had a forward air controller on the ground. We had, you know, the force structure targets. And I watched how they went and did this with two airplanes with pylons, two without. And it was a work of art. And they were — in about five and a half minutes, they took care — they basically addressed all the force structure charges, through the clouds, passing pictures up and down back at the clouds, you know, happy chat, pictures out there, John Vaden (ph) type stuff with the forward air controller and dealt with the SAM that was out there too. It was incredible.
I just watched — I’m like that’s not the way my brain works but that is the way their brains are working. And they’re — you know, General Krulak, who I used to work for, said you don’t man the equipment. You equip the man. So we’re equipping these young Marines, this generation that doesn’t know any bounds, latitude for technology and they’re leveraging this technology and doing great things. So really, really impressed with what I saw there with what they’re doing.
We’ve got five new lieutenants down at Buford right now. They’re trained to fly the airplane. When we started putting EA-6B guys in an airplane, I remember people were really worried about that. In fact, we had pulled an EA-6B Prowler guy off the list at one point because they just don’t have what it takes to fly the F-35. We now have two EA6-B guys. We just selected four more in the last — because I can’t afford to let Hornet guys or Harrier guys go into too much right now. They’re doing great. They’re doing great. One of them is an instructor pilot now. They’re doing fine. So it’s blending of Horner, Harrier and Prowler, and we’re getting the best of all of those weapon schools. We need the electronic warfare capabilities the airplane delivers. It’s fantastic. We’re doing really well.
VMFA-121 moves to Japan this January with 10 airplanes followed by six more in July. They will go to sea in the spring of ’18 in the First Marine Expeditionary Unit. The second VMFA-211 just stood up. They’ll go to sea in the summer of 2018 as well. VMFA-121, a Hornet squadron, is moving from Buford to Yuma to stand up next, and a VMFA-314, an F-18C squadron which will stand up in 2019 and go to sea I think in 2020.
So it’s happening. It’s not happening fast enough for me, bringing this new airplane in. They’ve been to Twentynine Palms, are up at Red Flag right now. By all accounts, it’s going really, really well. We’ve got a jewel on our hands and we’ve just started to exploit that capability. We’re very excited about it. So I can’t get them fast enough.
And bottom line is everybody who flies a pointy-nose airplane in the Marine Corps wants to fly this jet. And I know. I’ve got two sons. The eldest one is coming back from his deployment right now to go start the F-35 transition. The younger one is going to go in a carrier deployment and then try his luck trying to get into the F-35 program but it’s a great capability.
And for a force in readiness, a lot of people say that’s too much technology and too much capability for the US marines. That’s baloney. Who knows what we’re going to fight next. I know what the service culture is, anywhere, anytime, anyplace against anybody. That’s why you have the Marine Corps, right? That’s why our nation has this force of readiness.
So there’s a guy by the name of Frank Petersen, who is the first African-American aviator in the Marine Corps and the first general office, African-American general. I went to go see him before he passed at his house in Maryland. I went over there to go to talk to him. He goes, what are you doing here? I said, well, I’m here to kiss the ring, go talk to all the three-star aviators to make sure I’m on the right track. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, some people think we’re getting too much technology. He goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, F-35, V-22, too much for the Marine Corps. He goes, I was shot down in Korea and shot down in Vietnam. He said, never once I think I had too much technology under my rear end. You guys, go tell them they’re idiots. (Laughter.) So I do. They don’t receive it very well but I actually like telling that story.
So we are the force that’s kind of the insurance policy against the darkness that’s out there. I’m totally confident, totally confident in our track and our course. I’ve got no doubts that we’re on the right track. The only doubts I have is can I drive it home fast enough, even in a budgetary constrained environment to go deliver the capabilities of the Marine Corps as quickly as we can?
That’s what I — so V-22s are coming on. We’ll put sensors on the nose of all those airplanes. The F-35 is coming on strong, just starting now. Next year, we go to 18, and the year after that, it’s 20, 21 airplanes a year. Very excited about that. Got to finish those C-130 buy, got to finish our V-22 buy. We’ve got to finish — (inaudible) — buy, and then we’ll turn to on the next thing, which is this thing called Future Vertical Lift and our UAS strategy as well. And I think they’d say the future is all unmanned. I would say the future is — I think the future’s optionally manned or unmanned, all right? Give me the option out there.
Is that enough? Awesome. Thanks. Now I think we go to some kind of moderated discussion now.
MR. DONNELLY: You’re correct, sir. (Applause.) I think Dave and I are going to take a couple of pot shots at you and then we’ll turn it over to the real experts here.
LT. GEN. DAVIS: Awesome. In the rifle range of the Marine Corps they call it dog target so this can be dog target.
MR. DONNELLY: OK. All right. Well, right. You’re here to make sure everybody qualifies. OK. And before we get to the fun stuff, I’d like to review the readiness question for a bit. It’s very pleasing to hear that you’re on a ramp to get to the metrics that you need to be. You define it and I think quite correctly as, you know, as — (inaudible) — you know, statistics and lies and beyond lies are readiness statistics to some degree or another because that’s kind of a fungible, movable benchmark in many ways.
So you’re on a slope to get back to kind of steady state, in other words, predictable deployments, a schedule that you can see, right, that everybody can agree to or, you know. But if there’s anything that the last 15 years ought to have taught us is that the world is a lot less predictable. And the margin between what we plan for and what reality gives us is always kind of a — has been an unpleasant surprise a number of times.
So particularly for the sea services who have been in the business of rotational deployments for so long, I wish you could tell us a bit less about, you know, getting back to where the benchmark is but whether you think the benchmark itself is really the correct one and, you know, again, whether some higher level of preparedness for units that aren’t in — you know, that are in the bathtub part of the cycle is called for so over to you.
LT. GEN. DAVIS: First off, we’re not part of that bathtub cycle. We’ve never signed up to it. That’s the T-2.0 forces. Every unit is ready to go. So I don’t have a problem making — no. I don’t have a problem making our deployments right now. We’re actually getting there squeaking by. But the problem is the bench is not trained to the level it needs to be. So we don’t have a — (inaudible) — or if I had a — (inaudible) — I’d need 30 squadrons of tac (sp) or 35. I have 20, 20, 19 actually right now. So all 20 — so it’s designed small, designed to be highly ready. I don’t have the inventory right now to be the readiness and reliability out of some of the airplanes to be as ready as we need to be. So we’re not changing the benchmark. Actually, we’re trying to track back to the benchmark we’re supposed to be at. That’s the key.
MR. DONNELLY: Exactly. I’m trying to encourage you — you know, again, that benchmark, you know, is — again, reality has not conformed to the predicted benchmark for quite a while. So I’m suggesting that there’s something to be said for returning to — you know, to adopting a larger structure that gives you a readiness depth that we have wanted many times but just — you know, again, cannot achieve in any other way.
LT. GEN. DAVIS: Yeah. Well, here’s what I’d say is so we have a plan, our plan to basically get that. The last time we executed our flight hour goal, which is kind of that steady state was 2012 so four years ago. We’ve been tracking south since. And we’re now tracking back north. We have the right structure. I’ve got Marines squadrons. I’ve got the squadrons laid out there. I just don’t have the power tools in those units. So putting those airplanes back in the units, getting — it’s not just the airplanes but the parts for the airplanes. It depends on the type model series platform we’re talking about but they’re not mission capable supply — (inaudible) — way too high. So Paul Grosklags and Admiral Shoemaker are attacking that.
But making sure that the airplanes and the gun squadrons have the parts they need, have the range they need. We’re structured right for 20 squadrons attack air, for 18 squadrons of V-22s, just making sure that we have the right numbers of airplanes in those units and that they’re resourced and the crews are trained the way they need to. We can make our arranged commitments. I don’t need 30 squadrons but I need 20 fully manned, fully resourced squadrons.
MR. DONNELLY: Dave, I want you to help me out here, particularly as the Marines bring in — one of the first to bring in the F-35 and particularly with, you know, STOVL capability. It seems to me like those are going to be airplanes that look like campaign airplanes, not pump airplanes, not steady state airplanes just because they represent a capability that feels to me like we could really want and want in numbers that we’re not aiming for at this point. Does that make any sense to you, Dave?
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: I think what makes sense to me is that we get to the numbers that had been stipulated as the requirement sooner rather than later. And instead of continuing this really adverse belief that somehow we’re saving money by having to reduce buy quantities up front to be able to fit into an artificially and haphazardly driven topline that has nothing to do with need or capability. So put another way, we shouldn’t try to achieve false savings upfront by stretching production. We need to increase F-35 production to get to our desired quantities sooner, not later.
MR. DONNELLY: Well, in that case, I have to ask the Air Force, you know, which is where the big reductions and the buys, at least on the American side, you know, that’s where that costs increase and that scheduled delay is creeping in.
LT. GEN. DAVIS: If I could, sir, I’d like talk about consistency. We’ve been 420 F-35s for the United States Marine Corps. That’s 353 Bs, 67 Charlie models are going aboard the carrier with the Navy for our tac-integrated squadrons. We’ve been consistent with that, and, you know, all die in the ditch over that number. That’s what war fighting requirements mean. So that’s what we talked about.
So I’m trying to — we’re going to maximize the utility of the old airplanes, the Hornets and the Harriers. But we’re going to get out of that airplane, both those airplanes as quickly as we can. And the only way we can get out of them is when the F-35s arrive because right now, the United States Marine Corps tac, our dep-to-dwell is one to two. I grew up — when you and I grew up, it was a one to three, one to four. Life was good. My sons know a very different Marine Corps. It’s a one to two dep-to-dwell for tac air and for V-22s and for C-130s right now. That’s technically surge, surge for every — you know, for every six-month period you’re deployed, which always turns to be about nine months, you know, you’re home for twice that period but we all know for — it’s workups, it’s training. They’re not home very much. So they’re running really hard.
This is the best generation of Marines on the ground and the air we’ve ever had. I could not get — when I walked in that recruiting office in Buffalo, they would not take me with what I offered to them in 1977. They’d say, go away. The guys today would say, get out of here, you know. So very phenomenal folks, very serious. So what we have to do is we do have to get out of the old and get in the new as quickly as we can because that’s a combat capability. It’s not just the numbers but also to we’re seeing F-35. It’s an exponential improvement in combat capability and we have to have that for the battles that loom on our bound.
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: Tom, I want to make sure that we reserve time to hear from what you call have to say, but just real quick, I wanted to — you hear from General Davis the impact on readiness that affects obviously all the services, just a quick snapshot from an Air Force perspective.
The Air Force has been at war not since 9/11 but since January 1991. That’s 25 years. That 25 years of continuous combat coupled with budget instability and lower than — (inaudible) — top lines has made the Air Force the smallest, the oldest and the least ready in its history. So let me give you some numbers. So if you take a look at what’s happened not just with readiness but also force structure, here’s the way the Air Force looks since Desert Storm. Happed to have just celebrated the 25th anniversary. Thirty percent fewer people, 40 percent fewer aircraft, 60 percent fewer combat-coded fighter squadrons and 25 percent fewer aircraft per squadron.
Now, I guess I was going to say all of you remember but only about probably maybe a quarter of the people in this room remember the height of the hallow force of the 1970s. And when President Reagan took office pledging to rebuild it, the United States Air Force’s average age of the force was 12 years. Today we’re at 27. You know, to put that in context, airline average ages are 10 years. And, you know, they don’t put six or seven or eight or nine Gs on the aircraft every day. I hope not.
MR. DONNELLY: Only in the movies.
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: It wouldn’t get there anyway. The bottom line is we’re operating a geriatric Air Force. You know, we have fighters that are 55 years old, tankers that are just as old. You know, we’re operating training aircraft that are 40 years old. Our fighters and helicopters are 30 years old. And so when people focus on, you know, numbers and costs, and, oh, we’ve got to save some money, and, oh, we’ve got to cut the buy of F-35 because we can’t afford it, wait a second. You’ve neglected, Mr. United States security leadership, over the last 25 years modernizing your force. It’s an absurd situation that we find ourselves in.
You know, employing a B-52 today is like employing B-17 over Baghdad in 1991, in Gulf War one. So, you know, back then, in the ’70s, hallow force, half our military planes couldn’t fly because there weren’t any spare parts or proper maintenance. Guess what, folks. It’s just like that today. The chief of staff just recently came out and said that we’re looking at over 50 percent of our Air Force aircraft can’t fly because they lack proper maintenance and supply and parts. So, with that, let’s not take too much more time, us, babbling. Let’s hear what you all have to say.
MR. DONNELLY: Actually, Dave, while we’re getting the microphone circulated, I’d like to toss out one more target before we go before we have a guy whose service has some experience in actually operating the F-35. And, you know, as we’re all aware, it’s not only that when people have stuff in their hands, they’ll find innovative ways to use it, but, again, sort of in the Washington environment, the benchmarks are all existing legacy aircraft. Can it, you know, kill tanks like an A-10 can, et cetera, et cetera. I’d just like to know, General, a couple of insights, you know, the ones that really have surprised an experienced aviator like yourself coming out of the experience that you do have?
LT. GEN. DAVIS: This airplane does a very effective job killing targets in the air and on the ground and also making it easier for other guys to kill those targets as well. Like I talked about, some of the systems that we would normally employ for strike package, we can skinny down with that now. So it’s really, you’re combining the electronic warfare, the Stryker and the fighter mission in one platform, which is tailor made for what we want to do as a Marine Corps.
A lot of times, when I go out with my smaller units, I don’t have those capabilities. They’re high-demand low-density assets. Now, we have that with our airplanes. We’re also due with an electronic warfare side. There’s some pretty innovative stuff system called Intrepid Tiger which already goes on Harrier and Hornet now and UH-1Y. It’s on UH-1Y right now and that’s 22nd MEU. We’re putting on V-22 and C- 130. We’re upping that to be not only just a coms jammer but also too an RF jammer and an open architecture reprogrammable system out there developed by the government, which we are really keen on. So unmanned and manned platforms out there do their job.
I will say that the F-35, even in its current configuration, is doing a phenomenal job at killing all targets. And I go — I don’t — I know what I know. I talk to my guys, the guys that are flying the airplane. And, again, they are — if they thought the thing sucked or wasn’t good, they are not shy to tell me. They’re — it’s almost like a ready room, the relationship I have with my test units and my fliers. They’re very hard graders, they’re very experienced closer air support and fighter pilots. Not one of them would go back to their other airplane, not one. We go back to fly an F-18 or harrier or a Prowler, not a one.
We’re in very tight alignment with the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the United States Navy, which kind of need too this airplane. They are different but they’re also common from an avionics perspective. And how we are going to fight as a join force I think is going to be really interesting with this airplane, that we’re all operating this bird.
So when I’m watching at the micro level I know it will generate — I know how we think the tactics are coming together today but I watch how the captains and majors are self-organizing at the lower level, where they’re generating tactics. We now have kind of — started at the grass roots level, we have a Marine — we wouldn’t do it normally. We’d take a guy who taught at — (inaudible) — for three years and he’s now learning to fly the F-35A and he’s going to be an instructor in the Air Force Fighter Weapons School in the F-35 shop. We have an Air Force F-35 guy learning to fly the F- 35B which will be an instructor in our (MODS ?) One F-35 shop. We’ve got Navy F-18 guys, and we’re pushing our guys up to go to Top Gun to go so the weapons schools where I think most of the innovation takes place, where you put all the meat eaters from all the services in one common spot and we get most of our great innovative ideas coming out of the captains in the weapons school and advancing the ball. You know, we’re having a hard time keeping up with them. But they are the guys, if there’s a problem, they’ll identify it. They haven’t found a problem. They’re finding opportunities.
It’s different. It’s different. It’s a different — you know, the airplane doesn’t have streaming video right now. We will get that here pretty quickly but doesn’t have it right now. But, right now, the scenario I talked about, doing close air support to the clouds, how do you get streaming video to the clouds right now? You don’t. Doesn’t happen. So if we’re going to fight in dry, sandy places all the time where we’ve got clear air mass, roger that. We have to be prepared to go other places where there’s clouds and you’ve got to be able to see through the clouds. We now have a capability to do that. It’s different. And the youngsters are going, you know, the old guys are giving the RCA (another ?) look. They go — they’re gone. You know, they’re out and moving which is really I think impressive. All the services that are operating those things, it’s great.
MR. DONNELLY: All right. Show of hands. And where are my microphone people? OK. Just the microphone people. OK. Let’s work from the front to the back because we don’t have too much time so let’s start in the front row here and please wait for the microphone, put your statement in the form of a question and be succinct.
Q: Thank you for your leadership, General. It’s an honor to be here. And my question, having been a former Harrier guy myself and flown with you before and then the F-35 being first hand familiar with the capability that you’re speaking about and the MAGTAF concept in the Marine Expeditionary Unit, what changes do you see, if any, with how we integrate the F-35 into the Marine Expeditionary Unit from what we did with the Harrier?
LT. GEN. DAVIS: I think it will be vastly different. The change — the Marine Expeditionary Unit, when we put a V-22 in our Marine Expeditionary Units, it went from having a 25-mile or a 30-mile, 40-mile radius of action, or had a radius of action of thousands of miles. Totally changed the way we look at a MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the way our adversaries look at these MEUs, and, more importantly, how the combatant commanders look at these things. Now, I’ve got an airplane that can — they do routinely fly across the ocean. They do routinely fly from one AOR to another. Actually, I’ve got three airplanes right now on the Carl Vinson doing an — Admiral Shoemaker’s fleet battle experiment to see how that airplane would do as a (COD ?).
When you can close the battle space at 280 knots, it changed things. You have an unrefueled radius of 450 miles. Phenomenal. So we actually — hey, you really — you don’t have to put the C-130 out there for the C-53 (Echoes ?) and the Harriers. You need it out there for the V-22. And then we say we don’t have enough tankers. So innovation. So V-22 changed — there is no design spec that said we’re going to put an air refueling capability in the back of V-22. We’re doing it now. We’re doing it now. Why? We need gas. Why? Because people agree — hey, look what this could do. You know, if we had this capability, we could do this much more so we’re doing it. Great capability than ever, did great, and Boeing’s working to put that capability in the airplane. As it’s a roll on, roll off capability so we’re going to reconfigure the V-20.
So V-22, think about what the V-22 did to change the Marine Expeditionary Unit. It gave it a long-range strike capability. And when I mean strike, you know, earth people, right, coming out — grunts coming out of the back of that. If I was a bad guy, the thing I’d hate the most would be a V-22 because you can close from a long way off, can be unpredictable, right, it can do the speed and range. And it can be air refueled, phenomenal capability.
The F-35, we’ve just started to scratch the surface. Right now, where does it fit, where does it go, how do you feed it, how do you maintain it, we’re doing all that with our OT (ph) sessions on the ship, getting ready to do OT-3. More importantly, operationally, how do we use that airplane? I think great partnership with our Navy brothers, but how do we in our MEU, as our amphibious ready groups become more of an ESG, how do we become part of the fleet battle, how do we contribute from the day we sail to the day we arrive in an objective race? It’s not just about sailing across the pond and disembarking marines to go an objective area. That’s part of the mission.
The other part of the mission is they’re ready decks, they’re part of a fighting formation, and how do we fight from here to there and get all of our Marines and sailors back and forth where they need to be, and, more importantly, how do we get them to put them in position to do our nation’s bidding in the high-end fight, the A2/AD fighter, whatever fight that looms in our bow. We find ourselves consistently — you know, we’re forward deployed. The Naval forces are forward deployed, the point end of the spear, all time. Army and Air Forces too but we’re out there at sea a lot of times and where things change very quickly. We’ve got to be ready to react to that very quickly, changing the scenario out there.
So I think you’ll see — you could have a full deck of F-35s. You could see eight jets on there by six. You could — and the beauty about having not just an F-35 but your main assault support platform that can fly across the Atlantic to join that ship, I would say you’re going to see the amphibious ready groups might sail in one configuration and reconfigure partway through that deployment based on the needs of the naval component commander and the joint force commander.
MR. DONNELLY: Yeah. We were — an hour has flown by really rapidly but I want — why don’t we take two final audience questions, Lara, and the woman — the second. Yeah. Yeah. So if we could do two at once, and, again, be economical.
Q: Hi. Lara Seligman with Aviation Week. Thanks for being here, sir. So two questions. First of all, you guys just got back from the U.K. Can you tell me some of the lessons that you learned from that deployment with F-35? And then the other question I had was you said that the future is going to optionally manned. So can you just talk a little bit about what you meant by that? Do you mean the next generation after the F-35? What are the key assets that has to have?
LT. GEN. DAVIS: Right now, I think the F-35 is probably our tac air platform for the next 50 years in the United States Marine Corps. I’m thinking more about our future vertical lift platform which fly-by-wire airplane, all the variants that are being developed for that. So I would say if it’s a high reliability airplane, which we’re going to demand it’s going to be, it could be manned or unmanned. I would have seats in it, right, and it could be some mission it would be unmanned, some missions you’d be manned, all right? So I think that’s an option that should be available to us out there, especially with the kind of advances in technology that if it’s an open architecture airplane with a great reliability, we should be able to do that.
MR. DONNELLY: And one final question. And just heads up, Dave, I’d like you to take us home with maybe a reflection on how this new capability is going to affect our air portfolio overall.
Q: Hi, General. Tara Copp with Stars and Stripes. The Marines just put out a statement. Unfortunately, there was another fatal crash last night at Twentynine Palms, an F-18C. The pilot’s name has not been released yet. My question is there’s been an enormous cut in the number of flight hours that these pilots are getting in their training. How much more dangerous is it and how — at what point will the Marines really look at maybe we need to actually get these pilots the number of flight hours that they need?
LT. GEN. DAVIS: That’s a great question. First off, thoughts and prayers to the family. We did have a mishap last night. We don’t have all the details on it just yet. I track each and every unit, each and every week, the number of flight hours per pilot. This unit, particularly unit here was doing OK. We’ve been on that track now for two years to get all of our pilots in every type model series the hours they need.
Last year, the only guys that got their hours, the only T-1 unit I have right now is the F-35. So part of that is transitioning as quickly as we can. But, in the interim, this readiness recovery model allows us — once they get to T-2.0, you’re flying — your training and readiness manual numbers, your flight hours per month that you’re supposed to fly. So we’re not where we need to be. We’re below that number. I do not think we’re unsafe but we’re not as proficient as we should be, all right, across the spectrum for a nation’s force in readiness. We don’t let units fly, they’re unsafe, all right?
But as the deputy commandant for aviation for the nation’s force in readiness, we’re not where we need to be in the numbers of airplanes and the flight hours each pilot is generating. And that’s what — when I looked at this a few years back. That’s the number one thing I looked at, you know, number of flight hours per pilot and airplane to communities like the CH-53, F-18 low ebb was last summer for us, low ebb, 8.8 hours per month per pilot for the entire Marine Corps F-18 fleet to include our deployers. Not acceptable. Not even semi — you know, I used to have a saying, happy but not satisfied, all right?
I’m not happy or satisfied with the flights hours we’ve got right now. We’re tracking the right direction. We’re about — last month, we gained inches, 0.7 more flight hours a month per pilot last month, right, from the month before, OK? We’re recovering. Not as fast as I’d like to. Part of that is buy new. At five buy new, like I said, my F-35 guys are flying their flight hours. The only T-1 which is way above T-2, they’re ready for everything. They’ve completed everything in their training and readiness manual.
So fix the old, get the parts for the olds, not just getting the airplanes out of depot, getting the parts problem fixed in the Department of the Navy, and then buying the new. Not happy, not satisfied.
MR. DONNELLY: Dave, any closing —
LT. GEN. DEPTULA: OK. Just real quick. You heard General Davis talk about and give you some insights into the magic of the F-35 and what it’s capable of.
What I would tell you all is as we move into the future and we bridge this transition from an industrial age warfare to an information age of warfare, we have to stop thinking about procuring systems as if they’re just OK, a replacement for the previous aircraft. Modern aircraft are completely different. Fifth gen are completely different than their predecessors were.
I’ve said this before and I’ll keep on saying it until people finally get it. It’s not just an F-22 or an F-35. They’re (F, B, EA, RC, EW, A, W, C, S) 22s and 35s. We have to change this anachronistic nomenclature. They’re flying sensor shooters. You heard him. We’re going to do close air support through the clouds. Now, how do you do that? It’s all about information. So where we’re going and what is going to be the basis of the third offset strategy, whatever that happens to be, you can’t be, you know, proscriptive. We’ll figure what it was after we get there.
But the basis of whatever it will be will be the ubiquitous and seamless sharing of information. And those aircraft that are now flying around out there, they’re going to become nodes in a much, much greater architecture, you know, that we’ve coined as a combat cloud, you know, a combined intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance, strike, maneuver sustainment complex.
And so that’s what we need to be thinking about when we move forward an aircraft like F-35 and F-22 fifth gen, and into the future, remotely piloted aircraft, UAVs, drones, whatever you’d like to call them are going to play a good part of that as well. So thanks very much.
MR. DONNELLY: Thanks to you all, thanks to Dave for partnering with us. General, this is a kind of great way for us to close out tenure in this building. I hope you come back and see us again in our new digs. Thanks very much. (Applause.)
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