I think the Marines having their own air force is a luxury the country can no longer afford. Instead of buying Harriers, F-35s, F/A-18s, they can buy stuff that is core to their mission like the AAAV and helicopters instead.
My objective is to spend less on the military, while obtaining more capability in areas that need it, and the biggest savings are produced by eliminating stuff that isn’t needed, and making affordability and value-for-money a top-line priority, not something added after the fact in search for “efficiencies” on gold-plated monstrosities. The latter gets you idiocy like a barely functional $7bn destroyer. The Super Hornet — as one of the few clear success stories for the post-Cold War US military — is of course the poster-child for my restrained model of thinking, and it should be noted it did not come “naturally” to the US military, but rather was imposed as a consequence of prior failures.
So you are against organic airpower for the marines? How about USN CV? Ask any marine pilot and he will say that he fights for his fellow marines on the ground. how is it luxury? Air power, in this perticual case USMC aviation is an enabler. If they didn’t have it USN or USAF would be forced to do the same thing or they would not do any amphib landings at all. Same money from the same pocket going to the (almost) same people. Other countries would also get marine air if they had the money for it. ie UK with so called “tailored” airgoups. Well they used to anyway, but getting it back soon. Still even now with the whole sequestration mess USA still has so much more money to spend on their armed forces.
But I agree with you on some stuff like dropping the STOVL requirement. But getting the F-119 would rock the boat for the holy F-22, which ironicaly didn’t make it anyway.
\Dan
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