By Geoff Fein

The Marine Corps could be facing dire consequences if Congress and the president are unable to reach an agreement on the supplemental defense bill, according to a Marine Corps official.

The Marine Corps is spending about $750 million a month, half of which goes toward supporting forces in Iraq and other war efforts, Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commandant for programs and resources, said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast yesterday.

“We’ve got about $5 billion in the bank that we are writing checks on now. We will run out of money in that account unless we get funding by 24 March,” he said. “Right now if we see this impasse continue and we [do not] get the money, it would have dire consequences. We would have to furlough civilians and ask mission critical ones to come back with the promise we would pay them eventually.”

Should the Marine Corps have to furlough civilian workers, Marines would be called upon to fill in. “Right now that is a great concern to us and to the people involved,” Castellaw added.

The Marine Corps has about 10,000 civilian employees. Some of those, in areas such as fire control, would be asked to return to work. However, before any decision is made on letting workers go, the Marine Corps will do a line-by-line review to have a better idea of the number of workers that will be impacted, Castellaw said.

The Marine Corps is operating on funds from its operations and maintenance account. Although Congress passed a General Transfer Authority of about $3.7 billion, those funds all went to the Army, Castellaw said. “We did not get any of it. The reason is we are projected to run out of money after the Army.”

While the supplemental impasse is causing concern, the Marine Corps did pretty well in its FY ’08 baseline budget, Castellaw noted.

“I am working on one today that is $45 billion,” he said.

The Marine Corps is reviewing its major programs and has made some changes to its ground vehicle efforts. Besides the recent decision to cut back on the number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, the Marine Corps has also restructured its Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program, Castellaw said.

General Dynamics‘ [GD] EFV remain key to providing the Marine Corps a forcible entry capability, he added.

“It is our number one ground program. We will continue to push hard to get a successful program in place,” Castellaw said. “We reduced the numbers and to make up for some of those numbers we are looking at our ground mobility and what we need to do with that.”

The Marine Corps reduced its EFV requirement from 1,013 to 573 to procure larger quantities of other vehicles and provide protected ground mobility to the greatest possible portion of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), the service said.

The reduction in EFV numbers was one factor that led to the Nunn-McCurdy cost breach in June (Defense Daily, June 8).

There had been interest from lawmakers on making EFV mine resistant by putting a V-shaped hull, similar to the MRAP design, on, Castellaw said.

The Marine Corps looked at putting a V-shaped hull on EFV and determined it couldn’t be done, Castellaw said.

One problem was that the EFV body would have to be pushed up to get enough room to add that hull, he said.

“If you didn’t do that and tried to put another hull in there, then you increase the weight as well,” Castellaw said. “With how we tactically employ the vehicle, and other measures we use to reduce the vulnerability, right now it is our view that V-hull is not appropriate for this vehicle.”

While the Marine Corps is recommending to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) to trim its MRAP buy from 3,700 to 2,400, Castellaw said the service won’t junk the vehicles if there comes a time Marines no longer need them.

The MRAPs would be brought back and stored in the desert near Barstow, Calif., with the expectation that if the service needed them again, they could pull them out of storage.

“Exactly how many we’ll do that [with] is to be determined,” he said.

Another option might be to transfer some of the vehicles to the Army and to Iraqi forces, Castellaw added.

The Marine Corps is looking toward the Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC) to make up the difference in the EFV numbers the service plans to purchase, Castellaw said.

The Marine Corps is finishing up the MPC analysis of alternatives, he added.

The Marine Corps is also pressing hard for its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) requirement, Castellaw said.

The service is looking for a vehicle that is in the 13,000-pound class, he added.

“It is extremely important to us to have an expeditionary type of vehicle so we can put it on a ship, fly it, and light enough to fit in with how we fight,” Castellaw told reporters.

Castellaw, who had previously been the deputy commandant for aviation, said the Marine Corps is facing a strike fighter shortfall right now. However, the Marine Corps is not interested in legacy aircraft, he added.

“What we want is what the fifth generation brings us. It is a key element in our net centric warfare. EW (electronic warfare) is going to be significant in [the F-35B],” Castellaw said.

The Marine Corps will replace all of its existing tactical air with the F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing variant of Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Joint Strike Fighter, he added.

The F-35B is on track for first flight in May ’08 and Castellaw said the Marine Corps expects JSF to reach initial operational capability in FY ’12.

The service is also pushing Lockheed Martin and its sub contractors to develop sensors for JSF.

“What we are seeing is a tremendous reduction in the size of sensors. But at the same time a tremendous increase in the capabilities,” he said. “Let’s have the ability to put sensors on these airplanes that do not impact the stealth characteristics.”

The sensors do not have to be on one airplane. The jamming capabilities do not have to be on one airplane anymore, Castellaw noted.

“We are not looking to jam the world. We don’t want to put a B-52 up there for us and jam the continental United States,” he said. “What we are looking for is more of a precision capability and that’s the direction we are going with this type of concept.”

The Marine Corps, along with Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT], is continually looking at the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, Castellaw said.

“We’ll see what we need to do to keep that thing alive. Right now [there are] no significant changes yet,” he said.

The Marine Corps recently looked at Sikorsky‘s [UTX] H-3 Sea King helicopter. Castellaw said the H-3 is tremendously reliable.

“We are going to do some stuff to them to continue that reliability in terms of putting what’s known as Carson blades in there to give them a little bit greater blade efficiency, which translates into greater weight capability…weight lifting capability,” he said. “So we looked at the H-60 to see what we could do to continue that reliability. There remains a fleet of aircraft that can fly the president and the others that require executive lift in a safe and expeditious manner.”

Carson composite main rotor blades are manufactured by DuCommun AeroStructures, Inc. They produce blades for the Army’s AH-64 Apache helicopter.