Not since 2012 has the Marine Corps had enough available aircraft to provide pilots the minimum monthly flight hours to maintain basic proficiency.

A combination of high operational tempo, aging aircraft and insufficient funding resulted in less than half the service’s aircraft – rotorcraft and fixed-wing – able to fly when last officially measured, according to Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation.

On Dec. 30 the Marine Corps owned 1,065 total aircraft and just 439 were ready basic aircraft (RBA), Davis said during a recent meeting with reporters at the Pentagon.

“In the aggregate, if I am a businessman, I am underwater right now because I don’t have enough power tools to make my flight-hour goal,” Davis said.

“Our tactical aviation – our jets – are some of the oldest in the Department of Defense, certainly in the Department of the Navy by a factor of two in some places. Our need to recapitalize airplanes is large.”

The need to reset and recapitalize is especially egregious in the legacy fleets of Boeing [BA] F-18A/B/C/D Hornets. Of a total 171 jets “in reporting,” meaning they are under Davis’ command, 72 were ready to fly as of Dec. 30 including training and reserve aircraft.

Of those, 124 jets are assigned to active duty “gun squadrons.” On a daily basis, the Marine Corps needs 77 aircraft for its active fighter pilots to log enough flight hours to maintain proficiency. It had 56.2 available in December.

“I’m 20 airplanes shy of what I need to be able to make my flight-hour goal,” Davis said. “That’s a large number and that leads to the hours we’re producing now in hours per pilot per month.”

An F/A-18C Hornet, assigned to the Thunderbolts of Marine Strike Fighter Squadron (VMFA) 251, prepares to launch from the flight deck during flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Theodore Roosevelt is deployed in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, strike operations in Iraq and Syria as directed, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anna Van Nuys/Released)
An F/A-18C Hornet, assigned to the Thunderbolts of Marine Strike Fighter Squadron (VMFA) 251, prepares to launch from the flight deck during flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Theodore Roosevelt is deployed in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, strike operations in Iraq and Syria as directed, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anna Van Nuys/Released)

The aircraft are necessarily unsafe, but require ever more maintenance to make them safe for flight. Several fatal mishaps late last year were attributed to fatigue – of pilots, not aircraft – and pilot error, both of which are less likely when pilots can train, Davis said.

“We’re not seeing materiel problems,” Davis said. “We’re flying safe airplanes. We are not flying safe airplanes enough.”

The Marine Corps has a plan to restore the number of available fighter aircraft and in turn restore pilots proficiency through increased training flight hours.

Since 2014, the trend line has generally moved upward toward more available aircraft of all types, Davis said. In Dec. 2014, the service had 378 total “ready basic aircraft,” meaning they are ready and cleared to fly with the turn of key. In December 2016, there were 439 total aircraft ready to fly. The peak of readiness for 2016 was 473 aircraft at the end of October, according to Marine Corps statistics.

“That slope is a positive slope,” Davis said. “F-18s are included in there. Bottom line is that number, it’s tracking up.”

Last fiscal year the Marine Corps set a goal to return 43 total aircraft to a ready state but did one better at 44. This fiscal year the goal is to restore 35 total aircraft to the flight line, Davis said.

“I won’t know until 1 Oct. next year how we did,” he said. “I can’t collapse that gap any faster than I am right now with the funding restrictions we’ve been under in the past.”

An increasing influx of Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will begin to alleviate the pressure on F-18 fleets, Davis said. A recent analysis of the AV-8B Harrier fleet found that those aircraft have better readiness rates than the F-18 so the service has shuffled the order in which squadrons will transition to the fifth-generation F-35. 

“Because we have additional life in Harrier, we decided that we’re going to move F-18s left,” Davis said. “We’ve actually got much better numbers out of the Harrier than we were getting … everything from the readiness numbers to the hours-per-pilot are better.”

VMFA-122 moved up and will be the next F-35B squadron and will move from MCAS Beaufort, S.C., to Yuma, Ariz., in 2018. The next squadron in line is VMFA-314, which is another F-18 squadron stationed in Miramar, Calif. That unit will transition to the F-35C, the Marine Corps’ first carrier-launched F-35 squadron. Following will be an F-18D squadron also stationed at Miramar that will move into the F-35B.

“So the next three squadrons to transition will be F-18 squadrons,” he said. “That will kind of help me take the … good F-18s we have and with three less squadrons get a better density of jets out there.”

Even with an influx of cash, the Marine Corps has a finite capacity to reset aircraft. The service has asked for additional funding in fiscal 2017 for spare parts and other accessories that would accelerate meeting its goal six months early in 2019, Davis said.

“That’s when we come up out of water, unless someone decides to build me a lot of airplanes faster,” he said.