The Marine Corps’ aviation chief said July 6 that his service’s well-publicized aviation readiness problems are improving but that progress is not fast enough and is endangered by another potential budget stalemate in Washington.
Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, told the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel that 42 percent of his service’s 1,000-plus aircraft are flyable, up from about 33 percent the last time he testified. “However, we are still far short of what we need to be the force of readiness,” Davis said. “42 percent is not good enough. It’s not good at all.”
The readiness of the AV-8B Harrier jump jet has rebounded, but the CH-53E Sea Stallion heavy-lift helicopter lags and will take until 2019 or 2020 to recover, the general said. And while non-deployed air-crews are flying seven to 11 hours a month, up from six to nine hours the last time he testified, they are still falling about six hours short.
Davis was encouraged by the progress of the new Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Lightning II fighter, saying “we can’t get the airplane fast enough into the fleet” to replace aging, hard-to-maintain aircraft. The Marine Corps stood up its second operational squadron last week.
Davis said the F-35 had a 24-to-0 kill ratio in a spring drill, which was like “watching a Velociprator,” an aggressive dinosaur that “kills everything” in the Jurassic Park movies. He also praised the CH-53K King Stallion, the CH-53E’s planned replacement, noting that it recently lifted a 27,000-pound external load in a test. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, is developing the CH-53K.
But Davis warned that continued progress for Marine aviation depends on funding stability, which could be jeopardized by a possible political stalemate on the fiscal year 2017 budget request or by the potential return of sequestration’s deep budget cuts. “I would characterize our current recovery as fragile,” he said. “We’re in a deep hole and have a ways to go to climb out.”
According to Davis, shortfalls in readiness and flight time do not seem to have caused an increase in serious accidents for Marine aviation. But ground mishaps have jumped, and he recently hired an outside expert to find out why.
The general also expressed concern about airspace restrictions around military training ranges. The F-35 needs more room than older fighters to try out all of its capabilities, he said.