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WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps’ top aviator is hungry for more F-35Bs, telling reporters on Wednesday that he would like to see the service’s buy rate increase to 37 jets per year.
That would almost double the planned rate of F-35B procurement over the next few years, which is projected to sit at 20 aircraft per year from fiscal years 2018 to 2021.
"We have the infrastructure in place,” said Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation. "Bottom line is we've had a very anemic ramp, so we've been holding onto the older airplanes longer. If asked by the American people to get the airplanes faster, I guarantee we'd put them into play very, very quickly.
“We'd transition squadrons faster is what we'd do,” he said, adding that if the service were allowed to purchase 37 B-variants a year, it would be able to retire its legacy F/A-18 Hornet and Harrier planes by 2026.

Via Defense News.

Over on the book of faces, every time the F-35 makes the news, someone pops in to cry that the F-35 can’t do Close Air Support.

Which, frankly, strikes me as silly. The Marines literally invented CAS. I’ll share what I posted as a response to this balderdash yesterday.

How many times do we have to go around in this circle?

CAS is a mission, not a platform.

What makes CAS isn't how low and slow the airplane is, it's the proximity of friendly forces to the effects.
The value of low and slow in the Vietnam era was that it improved the CAS pilot's ability to generate situational awareness (SA) of the location of both the friendlies and the intended target.

Amazingly, in the intervening half century, technology has evolved somewhat, and there are improved devices and procedures that allow the CAS pilot to generate that SA without having to stooge over the battlefield in range of small arms fire while leaning over and staring at the rocks.

Indeed, it was the fantastic performance of the F-15E Strike Eagle, and Sniper pod equipped F-16s that spurred the Air Force to integrate some of those same technologies into the A-10, and give it the ability to deliver modern PGMs, so that it would achieve something approaching the performance of the fast jets. Prior that, the "danger close" of the A-10 was much greater than other platforms.

Heck, the B-1B and the B-52 are both high demand CAS assets because of their large weapon hauling ability, their great ISR capability, and their endurance. And they aren't loitering at 2000 feet.

And the Marines, who invented CAS, and have a fetish for it like no one else, are happy with their F-35s, gun or no gun.

But if having a 30mm cannon is that important to you, let the Apaches come play.

——-End rant

I’ll add this, regarding an increased buy of F-35s in the next few years. You’ll end up paying more up front in total dollars, of course, but the single best way to drive down unit flyaway costs is to increase the rate of production. For instance, there’s certain costs that we’re paying for whether we buy 1, 10, or 100 aircraft a year, such as salaries on the LMT team. Might as well get 37 planes for the same salary.

Another thing- Marine Corps fighter aviation is in terrible shape. They bet the farm on the F-35 replacing both the F/A-18A/B/C/D legacy Hornet, and the AV-8B. But the delay in introducing the F-35 meant those older aircraft have had to serve longer than anticipated. And that has driven maintenance costs up, and availability down. Something approaching 70% of the Marine Hornet fleet is unavailable. Now, having a quarter of the inventory out of service for deep maintenance is fairly normal. And having a fair percentage down for minor maintenance issues on any given day isn’t unusual. But right now, the availability of jets to the Marines is so poor that they can barely maintain minimum flight proficiency, let alone tactical and operational proficiency.

The situation on the Navy side of the house is bad as well, but not so catastrophic yet. If bumping production of Marine F-35Bs means a slight slowdown in F-35C production, I’m not sure the Navy would object too loudly.

Throughout history, amphibious assaults have been among the most complex military operations, and had a success rate that was usually quite dismal. One fascinating aspect of World War II was the fact that few amphibious assaults, either Allied or Axis, failed.

The point of critical danger of an amphibious operation is not the first wave of assault troops. It is the buildup phase where the supporting arms and logistics still have not been landed. You have to get them ashore quickly before the defender can concentrate his forces upon you and defeat you. And one of the critical aspects of WWII assaults that helped them to be successful was the widespread use of naval gunfire to provide fires until such time as the ground forces artillery could be built up. Naval gunfire has the advantage of a very heavy weight of fire, combined with a very high rate of fire compared to conventional artillery.

The challenge is to provide timely control of those fires. Voice radio allowed units ashore to quickly nominate targets of opportunity, and observers ashore could control those fires. Well before WWII began, many cruisers and battleships carried their own float planes to spot the fall of gunfire. This was initially intended for long range gunnery duels with the enemy fleet, but it was obvious that they could also spot for fires ashore. Unfortunately, float planes operating over the assault beaches were quite vulnerable to enemy action, and losses were high.

The answer to that was to use either carrier based or shore based fighter aircraft to spot gunfire. In fact, for the invasion of Normandy, the US Navy created a special squadron equipped with Spitfires exclusively to support the gunfire mission. It was only operational for 20 days, but was an important tool in the gunfire support toolbox.

In the Mediterranean and European theaters, the Royal Navy provided a great deal of the gunfire support to Allied operations. While some of the vocabulary, and a few of the procedures, differ in minor details, the methods of control and gunnery are quite similar to the US Navy’s procedures, and even familiar to today’s gunfire support.

You’d be hard pressed to not have heard about hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as frakking, as a means of increasing production of natural gas. Basically, less permeable rock formations have a water and sand mixture pumped into them. The hydraulic pressure of the water literally fractures the surrounding rock, freeing the natural gas deposits to be extracted. Frakking is also useful for certain types of oil deposits.

Frakking is controversial because certain environmental groups claim there are risks of groundwater contamination, or even seismic risks.

Of course, it’s hard to find evidence of those risks coming to fruition. While frakking has only been a trendy topic the last few years, the process has been around for quite some time. Indeed, the first hydraulic fracturing test was in 1947.

Interestingly, the concept of fracturing the substrata of a well has been around even longer, almost from the beginning of oil extraction. And the first attempts actually used high explosives, with limited success. The results were not encouraging enough to economically justify them.

Before hydraulic frakking became economically feasible, there was one other interesting attempt at explosive frakking. Well, actually, three. And they took the concept to an entirely new level.

Nuclear frakking.

Yes. You read that right. The Atomic Energy Commission, in cooperation with El Paso Natural Gas Company, had the bright idea to use a 26 kiloton nuclear device about 3/4 mile below the surface to fracture rock, and release trapped natural gas for extraction.

So, early in 1967, in northern New Mexico, they set off the device. And as far as fracturing went, it did just that pretty well. The problem, which should have been obvious, was that a fission device produces all sorts of very, very nasty radioactive byproducts. Normally, in a deep underground explosion, that’s not much of an issue. But tapping the natural gas meant that small quantities of the fission byproducts infiltrated the natural gas. The actual level of radioactivity was quite small. But even by 1967, the idea of a natural gas company sending radioactive natural gas to your average housewife was seen as a poor business proposition.

Nonetheless, bureaucratic inertia meant that the Atomic Energy Commission would try another nuclear frakking test in 1969 (40 kilotons- same infiltration problem) and yet again in 1973, where three 33 kiloton devices were set off together.

The third time was the charm, not in successfully frakking, but in convincing the Atomic Energy Commission that using nukes to extract natural gas was pretty much a waste of time.

Still, it’s interesting, in this era where building a pipeline becomes a focus of national protest, that only a relatively short time ago, it wasn’t all that controversial to be using nukes to support the energy industry.  Can you imagine the howls of protest today?

Nothing special, just a fun little battle in a division with Grump and LT Rusty.

And since Patch 0.6.1 is due out any day now, I had to render this while I could.

URASOE, Japan — A Marine sergeant major stationed on Camp Kinser, Okinawa, is physically unable to choose any selection from a vending machine not labeled “E9,” sources confirmed today.

Sgt. Maj. Matthew Brooks is frequently seen checking vending machines on and off base in hopes of finding anything in the E9 slots that he enjoys, according to reports. Just this morning, for example, he was conducting recon on a new set of machines on a street corner just outside Gate 3.

via www.duffelblog.com

You get the same rewards for a Kraken at Tier I as you do at Tier X, just sayin’.

So, as I write this, the world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, is being formally decommissioned, and will be struck from the rolls of the Naval Vessel Register.

As long as I have been alive, there has always been a USS Enterprise as a part of the fleet.

Indeed, the day I was born, my father was aboard her undergoing workups for a deployment to Vietnam.

Fair winds, Big E.