The new year also is scheduled to see continued flight testing of the Marine Corps’ F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) jet fighter, one of three versions of the Joint Strike Fighter intended to replace the Marine’s AV-8B Harrier jump jet, Navy/Marine F/A-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat, and Air Force F-16 and A-10. With the Osprey, the F-35B will make the USMC aviation wing all-STOVL.
“My focus is on the promise that the contractor has made to us that we will have IOC [Initial Operational Capability] of our first squadron – and we’re the first service to get an operational squadron – in 2012,” Conway reported. “We have accepted risk now for a number of years not buying fourth-generation airplanes, such as the Navy has done, to await the arrival of this aircraft.
“So all of our planning is 2012 backwards. And when we ask that question, we get the same answer: We’re going to make 2012 for you; it may be December of calendar year 2012, but we’re going to make 2012 for you.”
The future of other proposed new Marine Corps equipment appears less certain, from the Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR) replacement for the current Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) as a replacement for the HMMWV and MRAP.
“A SAW with a 200-round magazine is not perhaps terribly accurate shot-to-shot, but it’s a light machine gun. If you take another weapon that fires three-round bursts, you know that every fourth round is going to be an aimed shot. So in terms of accuracy, there’s probably no comparison,” the commandant said. “But let’s step away from accuracy for a moment and talk about suppression and the psychology of a small-unit fight. [If] the other guy’s got a light machine gun and I’ve got an automatic rifle, I’m going to be hard pressed to get fire superiority over him; you know, to keep his head down instead of him keeping mine down.
“Let’s talk about what it does to squad tactics and see how the troops feel about this thing, because you’re not only changing the kit, you’re changing the way, potentially, that we fight. And with this new automatic rifle, every 30 rounds, you got to change magazines. Well, you’re probably not going to do that, you know, in an exposed position. You’re going to have to drop down, change that magazine, and come back up again. You know, fire superiority is fleeting. And so I’m concerned about the sustained effects of all of that. … It’s a big deal when you start changing how a Marine infantry squad fights. And I’m going to have to be convinced that we’re making the right move before we start to purchase another system and change that whole dynamic. We also have to be able to justify to the Congress that we’re moving away from a tried and true weapon system that the Army’s going to continue with to go another way.”
Conway’s concerns about the JLTV go back to his distaste for the Marine Corps having been locked into what he considers an Army role since 2003.
“We believe in large doses of salt sea air – and there’s not much of that in Anbar or in Helmand province. What we offer to the nation is an assured access from the sea. And we’re strongest working with our brothers in the Navy, not our good friends in the Army. We need to get back to that,” he said. “And a part of that is shucking some of this weight we’ve picked up that is analogous to a land army … So as we look at our next set of vehicles, we want them to be helicopter transportable. We want them to fit in what we call lower-vehicle stow on the amphib ships.