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Jura said:

Apr 7, 2017
now
T-45s Will Be Modified as Navy Determines Oxygen Problem

source is Military.com

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The Navy and Marine Corps are still struggling with oxygen system problems that have plagued the Navy’s carrier training aircraft and have clogged both services’ pipeline of new pilots, the commander of Naval Air Systems Command said during a Wednesday congressional hearing.

Testifying before the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags said the service was exploring two courses of action in light of an increase in physiological episodes that has prevented the full operation of the service’s fleet of T-45C Goshawk trainers since a partial stand-down

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. Reports of illnesses and negative physiological effects from T-45 Goshawk instructors and students spiked to 47 incidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2016 – a four-fold increase over 2012 numbers, according to figures provided in the Navy’s written testimony.

In tandem the Navy is working to identify the failures in the On-Board Oxygen Generation Systems (OBOGS) that have plagued the Goshawks and take corrective actions for the long-term, as well as outfit the T-45s with “alerting and protective measures” to get the planes back to full operation in the short term.

“We’re doing those two things in parallel, one is not waiting for the other,” Grosklags said at the hearing.

Additionally, he said in response to a question, the Navy is considering replacing today’s OBOGS with an older liquid oxygen system (LOX) to provide air to pilots, but he called that a “longer-term solution.” Grosklags said he needs something to get the Goshawks back in the air in a matter of weeks, whereas the LOX solution could take months.

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LOX, or bottled oxygen, has helped cease the physical symptoms of hypoxia – headache, tingly fingers, grogginess – during physiological episodes on the F/A-18A-D Hornets, F/A-18E-F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers, giving pilots about 10 minutes to safely land the jet. When hypoxia occurred on a T-45, though, the use of bottled oxygen didn’t always end the symptoms, meaning that LOX is not a valid solution for T-45s right now.

Included in the Department of the Navy’s written testimony to the panel were some mitigation measures the services have implemented to reduce physiological episodes in the trainers that include new training regimes, oxygen-monitoring units, and forming a team with representatives from the government, T-45 manufacturer Boeing and OBOGs manufacturer Cobham. None have proven so far to have definitively fixed the problem.

Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters following the hearing that the Marines would start to suffer from pilot-production problems if a solution that allowed the trainers to be fully operational wasn’t found by September. The same training pipeline is used for all naval pilots, whether they ultimately serve in the Navy or Marine Corps.

“They have to be in T-45s by September or bad things [start happening]. We start to have problems with numbers in the fleet,” Davis said.
“We want them to fly safe airplanes. Sometimes things happen with these airplanes, right. Job one: Make sure the airplane is safe.”

A message left with Naval Air Forces on when the Navy would run into problems with its pilot production due to T-45C operational restrictions was not immediately returned.

And still, while mitigation measures are underway for the trainers, the enduring mystery remains of why pilots are suffering troubling and increasing physiological episodes in not only the Goshawks but also in the Navy’s fleet of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growler fleets as well.

“This system has worked fine for 20-plus years. Something happened,” Davis said
“It’s the same box in the [AV-8B] Harrier. It’s the same OBOGS box and we don’t have a problem in Harriers. So what’s different? What is different in the T-45s?”

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— led by U.S Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift — is due to do be briefed later this month.

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The fiscal year 2018 Air Force budget request represents “the best balance of our readiness and modernization” given “the fiscal constraints we face,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch told Congress on Wednesday.

“We had to make tough choices,” said Bunch, the Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition official.

In terms of unfunded priorities, “first on our list would be readiness,” Bunch told the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee. A prime example is the E-8 JSTARS program. More than a shortfall of funding, Bunch said, “What I have is a shortfall of ability to get them in the air and have them available to support the mission.” Recapitalizing that system, he said, is a top priority. In the meantime, the service is performing “service life studies in a variety of areas” to make sure “we can keep that aircraft viable” until its replacement comes online.

In his written testimony, Bunch also said the Air Force is committed to keeping only six squadrons of A-10 aircraft, down from the current total of nine. The move is driven again by the need to balance fiscal priorities, said Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, USAF deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements. “If we had an unlimited budget we would keep everything we have and just continue to grow an F-35 fleet.” But in order to bring on between 48 and 60 F-35s per year, “we will be retiring some of our older airplanes and putting newer airplanes or more capable airplanes into these units.”

Bunch was questioned on the slow pace of the F-16 upgrade program, which is replacing the fighter’s legacy radars with active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, among other things. He said a $244 million contract from May allows the service to procure 72 more radars in the program, which is on track to reach initial operational capability in the third quarter of FY19. The Air Force plans to fund at least 300 more upgrades in FY20, with an option to go as high as 450, Bunch said.

When asked about a reduction in the request for AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile munitions in the FY18 budget, Bunch said the drop is related to a technical issue. The problem is “difficulties we’re having in getting the form fit function refresh on schedule and progressing.” He said the service “continue to work with the company” to correct the problem. “We would love to buy more,” he assured the committee, “but I need them to get the production right.”

Harris also said the budget seeks to address the high demand for ISR products across the joint force—mostly by taking a long view and moderating production in the near term. “We have frozen our medium-altitude ISR at 60 lines,” he told the committee, “with the intent of getting the team healthy so that we can surge if required for the future.” When combined with an ongoing effort to recapitalize “our big-wing ISR,” Harris said the Air Force will be able to “focus our medium-altitude ISR into more important areas and be on-target much faster.”

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The administration’s Fiscal 2018 budget plan, which includes a three percent jump in overall funding, is a “good start” to the climb back to readiness, but overall more funding and stable budget plans will be needed, Air Force leaders told lawmakers Tuesday.

Testifying in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said the small increase is a start to “arresting the decline that we’ve seen over the years. It’s a only a start to where we need to get with stable budgets that we can plan for.”

Eight years of stable funding, including the purchase of more aircraft such as F-35As and KC-46s, will be needed to get back to full-spectrum readiness. The requirements come as the service is facing a dramatic shortfall in pilots and tightened funding for other acquisition programs such as the UH-1N Huey replacement and Combat Rescue Helicopter, and maintaining the current fleet.

“We’re going to keep fourth generation aircraft into the 2040s,” Goldfein said. “And so what you’ll see in this budget, in addition to buying fifth generation aircraft, is actually modernizing our fourth gen. And here’s what we’ve found when we talk about the fighter inventory; what we found and continue to develop is the ability to fly these aircraft together in a complementary fashion so that fourth gen actually makes fifth gen better and fifth gen makes fourth gen better.”

The budget is moving forward on the B-21 next generation bomber program, including $2 billion in research and development funding. That number faced criticism from committee chairman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for being under the “veil of secrecy.”

“We are very open with the appropriate committees and the Congress about exactly what we’re doing and what we’re spending it on,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said.

“That’s not true, Madame Secretary,” McCain quickly responded. “That is simply not true. The American people need to know if we’re going to spend $2 billion on what, R&D? Does the Air Force plan on releasing any further details on the program?”

Wilson said there “is a balance” between informing Congress and telling enemies about the program. The Air Force has determined that it requires a

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, including at least 100 B-21s, Goldfein said. However, the Pentagon is reviewing its national security strategy and that could impact future Air Force bomber force structure, he said.

Wilson also warned lawmakers that another schedule slip with the KC-46 tanker program is likely. There was a meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning to assess risk in the testing schedule, with an independent assessment on timing expected. “We may see a couple of month slip is what I’m hearing informally,” she said.

The Air Force is looking at two major helicopter acquisition programs, two of which are also seeing issues in the current budget process. The UH-1 replacement program had to be adjusted after contractors said they could not meet requirements with current aircraft. The service now expects its formal request for proposals in July, Wilson said Tuesday.

The Combat Rescue Helicopter program, which will replace the Air Force’s HH-60G Pave Hawk fleet, saw a budget cut of $100 million in the Fiscal 2018 request. Goldfein said this is a “disconnect that we continue to watch.” Asking about this shortfall, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said it is a “disservice” to those in uniform “who need that helicopter.”

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Jura said:

May 18, 2017

while the question is Will the KC-46 face another schedule delay? The Air Force will find out in June source:

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Although Boeing maintains it can deliver the first KC-46 by the end of the year, the Air Force now believes it will not accept the new tanker until late spring of 2018, the service announced Thursday.

Either way, the first delivery — originally scheduled for September — will be delayed at least a couple months.

"The top issues slowing progress are achieving the FAA airworthiness certifications and completing the flight test program," the Air Force said in a written statement issued days after the annual schedule risk assessment concluded. "Once Boeing receives the remaining design approvals from the FAA, they expect testing to proceed on a faster pace."

The FAA, or Federal Aviation Administration, is an aerospace regulatory agency of the United States government.

At this time, the Air Force hasn't altered its expectation that Boeing will be able to meet the October 2018 deadline for required assets available, or RAA, which call for the company to deliver 18 tankers and nine refueling pods. However, the service said it would have greater confidence in the schedule in July, when Boeing secures final design approvals from the FAA.

The announcement of a projected delay is no surprise. The Air Force has been telegraphing for weeks that the risk assessment would conclude that Boeing would need more time to complete key milestones.

On Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service’s top uniformed acquisition official, told reporters that the Air Force was briefing lawmakers and would announce the September 2017 goal for first delivery would not be met, nor would it be likely that Boeing delivers the first KC-46 by the end of the year.

"Boeing is still committed, they're putting resources [into it] and their drive is to get it done faster than what we believe they can,” he said. “We're all for that. We would welcome that, and we will provide them the resources we can to make that happen."

He added that the service continues to explore options with Boeing on whether the pace of delivery could be accelerated to meet the current RAA date.

In an emailed statement, Boeing spokesman Charles Ramey acknowledges risk in the KC-46 test schedule. However, he asserted that the company can still deliver the first plane in late 2017.

“We expect to be much more efficient during the second half of testing now that the design has stabilized. The majority of developmental testing is complete, which reduces risk to the certification and verification testing. Additionally, we recently added a sixth aircraft (the second [low-rate initial production] plane) to the flight test program, which will help with test efficiency and improve our ability to complete ground and flight test points going forward,” he said. “We are not discovering any new technical risk.”

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The Aegis ballistic missile defense program is making steady improvements on both Navy ships and the Aegis Ashore system being installed as part of the enhanced European defense initiative, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said on Wednesday.

In testimony to the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, Vice Adm. James Syring said the fiscal 2018 defense budget would provide $624 million for the Aegis BMD programs. That would provide for increases in the Standard Missile 3 and SM-6 interceptors, continued upgrades to the Aegis BMD systems aboard Navy ships and tests that should lead to production decisions on the enhanced SM-3 Block IB and IIA missiles.

Planned tests also should lead to operational decisions on a new Ship-based Terminal defense capability using upgraded SM-6 missiles to protect ships from anti-ship missiles and to extend a layered defense for forces ashore, Syring said in his prepared testimony.

Syring said the Navy should have 36 Aegis BMD-equipped warships operational by the end of fiscal 2018 and 167 SM-3 IB missiles on hand.

He noted that the first Aegis Ashore site in Romania is now operational and the second site in Poland will become operational in 2018.

Syring said testing has shown the SM-3 IIB missile, being developed in cooperation with Japan, may be ready for production decisions within the next year.

Much of the open hearing was consumed with discussion of the national missile defense system, with Syring opening his testimony with a video of the successful May 30 interception of an intercontinental-range missile by a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense interceptor launched from California.

The admiral said that test defeated the “longest-range, highest-altitude target” ever by a GMD interceptor. He also countered a statement from a committee member that the interception was not a realistic test of the challenge the nation would face from an actual ICBM fired by North Korea.

The test scenario “was an exact replica of the situation we would face if North Korea launched a missile,” he said.

He said he did not know what kind of message the successful test would send to North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un, but said it should send a message to the American people that they can defend them.

But he added, the missile defense system is not finished. “We are on a journey,” he said.
Asked by subcommittee chairman Mike Rogers to assess how the missile defense program was compared to the growing threat, Syring said, “we are not confidently ahead of the threat.” Although the program was “addressing the threat as it is,” he said recent events “cause me concern,” referring to North Korea’s continued testing of ballistic missiles with greater capabilities.

“We must assume that North Korea can reach us with a ballistic missile,” and must do everything possible to meet that threat, he said.

Syring said the current budget would allow completion of the planned expansion of the BMD system to 44 interceptors by the end of this year.

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Just how many fighter jets does the

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need? It depends on whom you ask.

The service is looking to grow its fighter fleet to stay competitive against near-peer threats such as Russia and China. To do so, it believes it needs to increase its number of fighter squadrons from 55 to 60.

“We have the same level of tasking today as we did during Desert Storm, and we have 55 squadrons rather than 130 [we had then],” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

During the hearing, Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein outlined their priorities for the fiscal 2018 budget request along with the Air Force’s “unfunded” list, a wish list for additional funding sent to lawmakers each year that could boost readiness and modernization efforts.

This year, the Air Force is asking for an additional $10.7 billion in its wish list. Most notably, the service is asking for 14 more

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, which would bump the 46 aircraft in the FY18 budget request to 60 total.

The service for years has warned of program delays, shortened flight hours, capability gaps and sidelined procurement programs, among other shortfalls in the wake of sequestration and other budget constraints.

Citing the national military strategy, committee chairman Sen. John McCain asked where the service stands on its pilot and jet inventories. Goldfein replied it needs many more of each to be war-ready.

“It’s continual to say that it’s going to take us approximately eight years to be able to get the full-spectrum readiness with stable budgets,” Goldfein said in reference to the total force.

What Will It Take?

In his

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published earlier this year, McCain said the service “may require closer to 60 combat squadrons, totaling around 1,500 combat-coded fighter aircraft,” which is in line with Goldfein’s testimony.

But the real number is actually more like 1,350, an Air Force spokeswoman said.

“We have 1,145 combat-coded fighters now,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Military.com on Tuesday. “The question was, how many do you need? And you can answer that in various ways.”

Stefanek said moving to 60 squadrons is the goal for the Air Force, which equates to moving from the current 1,145 to a minimum of 1,350 combat-coded jets. “We all know we have a finite amount of money so, even though we need a minimum of 1,350, our budgets don’t support that” in the short term, she said. “That’s why it’s hard to talk to.”

To be clear, 1,145 jets isn’t the total inventory of fighter aircraft the service owns today. “The current Total Aircraft Inventory is 1,970 fighters,” Air Force officials said in an email.

Stefanek explained that if someone were to go out to every flightline the Air Force operates and count each individual jet, they’d total 1,970. Congress directed the service through the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2016

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1,900 fighter jets past 2021.

Roughly 825 jets are part of “test, training, weapons school, developmental test, backup inventory — all the other fighters that are in the inventory that are not combat-coded, where you have money and manpower ready to go against a war plan,” she said.

The Air Force will never move its training assets to make them combat-coded, explained John “JV” Venable, a senior research fellow for defense policy at The Heritage Foundation. Venable flew

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throughout his 25-year Air Force career.

“You can’t kill the system which generates the golden eggs for you — the pilots that go and fill the lines,” Venable told Military.com on Wednesday. “You’ll always have to have it in place.

“Develop the pipeline that will allow us to generate the personnel that will come in to replace pilots and maintainers,” that the Air Force will lose to attrition over the years, he said. “It’s not expanding it in anyway, it’s just making it healthy and sustainable.”

Fix the Force First

Before he became president, Donald Trump told audiences in September, “We will build an Air Force of

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,” confusing those who knew the Air Force already had more than that.

“That number … didn’t match,” Stefanek said, but added, “Well yeah, we have 1,900 fighters. They’re not ready … to go, people not ready and trained to go to fight — that’s the difference.”

The Air Force’s spending plan for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 totals $183 billion, a 7 percent increase from the current year, with hikes planned for all accounts except military construction.

In the 2018 fiscal budget, the service plans to buy a total of 46 F-35As, the service’s variant of the Lockheed Martin Corp.-made fifth-generation stealth fighter, designed for taking off and landing on conventional runways.

Should the service get its wish, those extra 14 fighters in the unfunded list could increase the fiscal 2018 buy to 60, coming closer to the planned purchase of 1,763 jets total.

Because the Air Force plans to keep much of its legacy fleet — such as F-16s,

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(although the C/D models are

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), and

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— flying for years to come, it’s going to take a mix of fourth-generation and fifth-generation fighters to fill the service’s desired squadron boost.

Venable said critics have to look beyond moving numbers around on a piece of paper or new aircraft “buy rates” and look instead to the people who fly.

“We need fighter squadrons ready to

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and [that] are fully combat capable, and that’s the challenge that was kind of the elephant in the room yesterday,” Venable said, referring to Tuesday’s SASC hearing.

“The Air Force really is a hollow force. And it’s hollow because of the things [Goldfein] mentioned: training, personnel and equipment. Our fighter force is operating at a sortie-per-aircraft rate, so our ability to fly an airplane a number of times per any given month — that rate is below what it was during the Carter administration.”

Venable said Goldfein and Air Force leadership have the right picture in mind in terms of “plus-ing up” the fighter and maintainer force first in order to sustain current operations.

Goldfein said the service projects it will be 1,300 fighter pilots short by the end of fiscal 2017.

The Air Force will have to “peanut butter spread” the amount of money it has been given even as it acquires new aircraft such as the F-35, Venable said.

“General Goldfein needs more money,” he said, adding all the military branches have the same concern.

The Heritage Foundation this year

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on the national military index, recommending the budget for Air Force operation and maintenance (O&M) funding should “increase by 4 percent in 2018, and a total of 20 percent over the next five years.”

“We bring readiness back to [a healthy] level,” with that funding, Venable said.

“The Budget Control Act needs to be repealed. Democrats and Republicans alike have to come and realize where we are — that wake-up call has got to come from Congress,” he said.

“Because you can’t get a service chief to come forward and tell the world he’s not ready to go to war,” Venable said.

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bd popeye said:

Thanks AFB...If I were in charge we'd have 14 CV/CVNs with a like number of air wings... Kitty Hawk, Constellation & John F Kennedy would all still be in commission. + Forrestal as a training CV.

I'm very sure Pres. Trump stated that he wanted eleven naval airwings. I want to see it!

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The Marine Corps’ top pilot sketched a vision of

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, spearheaded by

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,

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, and the future

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, all linked to each other and the rest of the force by Link-16 and MADL.

Marine F-35s have already practiced spotting targets for Marine artillery rockets and Navy missile defenses,

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told reporters. Now imagine those F-35s linked to swarms of MUX drones —

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than manned fighters — that provide even more sensor data, more firepower, more jamming and even resupply. Imagine V-22 Osprey tiltrotors, escorted by F-35s and MUX, carrying fuel, munitions and spare parts to

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, where the fighters and drones can land to refuel, rearm, and return to the fight without flying back to the fleet.

The goal is to sustain a relentless tempo of strikes in the teeth of high-tech defenses — even while the Navy ships that support Marine operations hang back

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. The challenge of so-called

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threats and the opportunities of

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have triggered an upsurge of tactical innovation, especially among

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.

“It’s a good time to be a US Marine,” Davis told reporters after a Senate airpower hearing yesterday. Visibly enthused, he described one development after another as “exciting” and wishing aloud that he could get in the cockpit himself. (After 37 years in uniform, Davis is in fact retiring next month). “I wish I was younger so I could fly this thing, but I’ll have to vicariously watch other people do it,” he said.

The innovation is especially vibrant in the F-35 community, Davis said. And that community extends beyond the Marines, he emphasized: “It’s really cool, the synergy between the services.”

While Navy F-35Cs won’t reach Initial Operational Capability until 2019, “the Marine Corps and the Air Force IOC’d already, and already we’re integrating our weapons schools at

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and at

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,” Davis said. A Marine is flying

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as an instructor in the Air Force school at Nellis, while an Air Force F-35A pilot is getting his F-35B qualification to instruct at Yuma.

Yuma’s Weapons & Tactics Instructors (WTIs) are at the forefront of exploring new ways to use the new plane, such as having an F-35 spot ground targets and transmit targeting data to Guided MLRS

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. The launcher itself had been flown in on a C-130 transport, Davis added, simulating a “rocket artillery raid” — the kind of

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that is central to future Marine Corps concepts of operations.

For this initial experiment, the F-35 pilots had to manually relay target data to the artillery unit on the ground, Davis said, but “the next WTI class will probably look for automatic target handoff to the GMLRS battery.”

To pass data from F-35s to other forces, Davis said, “Link-16’s one way we do that right now, (but) we’d like to have higher fidelity, higher bandwidth data,” for example by using (the) Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) built into F-35s. MADL was originally meant as a way for F-35s to communicate with each other, undetected by the enemy, but the military is now experimenting with MADL links to other systems. In a

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, for example, an F-35 passed target data via MADL to a Navy

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. The Aegis wasn’t on an actual ship but rather a test installation at White Sands Missile Range, the so-called

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.

In the White Sands test, Davis explained, there was an incoming cruise missile that the “ship” couldn’t see with its own radars because it was hidden behind a mountain range. Flying much higher than a ship’s radar mast and therefore enjoying a much wider field of view, the F-35 saw the missile and transmitted target data via MADL. The ship fired a

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and shot the threat down. What Davis may know and be keeping to himself is just how much greater is range and sensitivity of the F-35’s sensors. But he did offer a few hints.

“The sensors in the F-35, the radar, are really, really strong. It’s exceptional, there’s nothing like it in the world,” Davis enthused. “It’s the smartest kid in class.” In one F-35 flight out of Yuma, he said, “they asked us to look at a missile launch from Vandenberg and we tracked it all the way to space with the F-35.”

“It’s a King Kong killing machine,” Davis said. “It sees stuff and it’s able to kill stuff, very, very effectively. It sees through the weather, air to air targets,

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…. Now we’re trying to push the information from that airplane, offboard that” to the rest of the force.

The next big step in F-35 experimentation will be deploying on

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, starting with squadron VMFA-121 this summer. Davis suggested using the deployment as a test for the “

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” concept. The idea is to pack an amphib with all the F-35Bs it can carry and use it as a kind of mini-Nimitz, rather than the current model in which it’s mainly a helicopter carrier with some Harriers aboard.

“As soon as that ship gets there, if they wanted to put all 16 airplanes they have aboard the ship, they could go. And if I were them, I would,” Davis said. “We, as a nation, should experiment with this capability.”

...

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MUX & V-22

The usually unarmed V-22 transport is increasingly the workhorse of the Marine Corps — and, with the new

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, the Navy as well. Its range and speed increased the Marines’ reach sixfold over the geriatric CH-46 helicopter, so no wonder they set the benchmark for the new Marine Unmanned eXpeditionary (MUX) drone.

“V-22…totally changed how we project power from a seabase and how people look at a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit): 450-mile radius vice a 75-mile radius,” Davis said. So for MUX, the Marines want “range specs at least as good as V-22; air speed at least as good as V-22; and air refuelable (like V-22); can land vertically on board a ship (like V-22).”

One of MUX’s major missions will be escorting V-22s into combat zones, something jet fighters are too fast to do while attack helicopters are too slow. But that’s just one of a wide array of roles Davis envisions for a multi-mission MUX.

It “not only does death and destruction from on high, (flies) long range to

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and be a mission partner in manned/unmanned teaming for F-35s, but also has a cargo requirement as well,” he said. “We think it will carry an air to air radar, so it will give us airborne early warning. It will give us

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, it will give us air-to-air fires, air-to-ground fires, (and) airborne resupply at range.” He later mentioned Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance (ISR) and communications relay missions as well.

“It’s actually pretty exciting,” Davis said. “There are a couple of people that are building prototypes”: Northrop Grumman, Bell, Boeing, and Karem Aerospace. “I think the first airplane to fly, the first model, will fly in the fourth quarter of ’17.”

When you combine all these aircraft — the V-22 and MUX, which take off and land vertically like a helicopter, and the F-35B, which is a short takeoff/vertical landing “jump jet” — you get some “really interesting” options to operate independently of both conventional concrete airfields and 1,000-foot-long

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. “The naval service is trying to power project from a seabase,” Davis said. “But what if I’m operating from a long way away? Now what happens to my surge sortie rate?”

Traditionally, supercarriers and big-deck amphibs alike operate relatively close to land, cutting down on the distance their aircraft have to travel to and from targets. Increasingly long-range

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, however, are forcing the fleet to seek refuge further and further offshore. Increasing the distance aircraft have to travel increases the time required for each sortie and therefore reduces the sortie rate, cutting the number of troops and bombs that can delivered to targets each day. But what if you had a pit stop between the ship and the target?

“Combine shipboard platforms with a land base, (an ad hoc) little strip out there,” Davis said. “With our F-35s and (MUX), a VTOL UAV, I can actually get out there at range, expend my ordnance, drop in,

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and back airborne again.” The aircraft would only return to the ship for maintenance too complex for the austere land bases to handle.

While Davis focused on F-35 and MUX operating out of these

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(EAB), other thinkers and publications make clear the EABs would depend on the V-22s to function. Only the tiltrotors have the combination of range, speed, and carrying capacity to bring in operationally significant quantities of ammunition and fuel. What’s more, the V-22s are being upgraded to provide

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.

Other Marine Corps aircraft would certainly play their own roles. Really heavy gear would have to be delivered to forward bases by CH-53 helicopter, which is slower but huskier than the V-22. Smaller helicopters — AH-1 gunships, UH-1 transports, Navy H-60s — would run shorter-range missions, including protecting the fleet from

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. But the crucial synergy is the V-22’s long-range cargo capacity, the F-35’s sensors, and the MUX’s versatility.

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