2RHPZ
06-14-2004, 03:13 PM
Wars Overextend U.S. Marine Corps Resources
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS
Thirty-two months of continuous warfare are taking their toll on the U.S. Marine Corps.
Battling insurgents in Iraq, chasing Taliban in Afghanistan, peacekeeping in Haiti and patrolling the Horn of Africa from Djibouti, the Corps is “exactly where we always wanted to be, over the globe,” said Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Magnus. “But it stretches the force.”
The 177,000-strong Corps is being stretched in ways planners never anticipated. More than 25,000 Marines are in Iraq. Another 5,000 are on their way or soon to head there. More than 4,000 are in Afghanistan. Nearly 1,500 are in Haiti, about 1,600 are in Djibouti and Africa, and around 14,000 remain stationed on Okinawa. More than half the Corps has been deployed since October 2001, many Marines for two and three times. And the strain is beginning to show.
“We can’t do that indefinitely,” Magnus, deputy commandant for programs and resources, told reporters in Washington on June 8. The Corps, he said, simply isn’t big enough to “do continuous war, year after year after year.”
The strain is showing on the service’s people, its equipment and its budget, even as the Marines are being ordered to accelerate deployments to Iraq and extend the time in-country of those already there.
The Equipment
At the top of the stress list, said Magnus, a veteran CH-46 helicopter pilot, is the service’s fleet of AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters.
“We’re about tapped out for Marine aviation,” he said. “This is a rotary-wing and C-130 war,” referring to the helicopters and KC-130 Hercules aircraft that bear the brunt of Marine aviation operations in Iraq.
The KC-130 transport aircraft of VMGR-352 from Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Calif., and VMGR-234, a reserve squadron from Fort Worth, Texas, have been busy moving troops, equipment, supplies and food between the Marines’ bases in Iraq and Kuwait.
The Marines’ helicopters — CH-46 Sea Knights, CH-53E Super Stallions, UH-1N Hueys and Super Cobras — are in big demand, too. Super Cobra gunships, which can be heavily armed for attack missions, are escorting ground convoys, transport helicopters and medevacs in Iraq.
The ground threat from rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire and anti-air missiles forced the Corps earlier this year to fund and install survivability systems, such as chaff dispensers and radar suppressors, and some aircraft have gotten extra armor protection.
But the turbine engine blades of the Cobras, Magnus said, “are being eaten alive by the fine, hard sand of the Arabian peninsula.”
The demands of combat and resulting decline in regular maintenance is leading to fewer Cobras being available, meaning AV-8B Harrier and F/A-18D Hornet jets are taking over many of the reconnaissance and surveillance missions previously handled by the helos. But that too has a price: It’s “more expensive to drive an F-18 around the sky than it is to drive around a Cobra,” he said.
Although the number of spare parts to keep the helicopters running has been increased, Magnus sees the wear-and-tear problem getting worse in the near future. “This equipment is obviously under accelerated usage,” he said, “so it’s going to have a shortened life span” — and will need replacement sooner than budgets now call for.
Fighting an insurgent war in Iraq also has meant vehicles need greater protection, resulting in a major “up-armoring” of a significant portion of the Corps’ 18,000 tactical wheeled vehicles. More than 3,000 vehicles already have been hardened. That total is expected to top 4,000 by summer’s end. But the added weight of protection causes vehicles to wear out earlier, and the pace of operations has seen regular depot-level maintenance fall by the wayside.
“It can’t go to the depot, because we’re using it in a war,” Magnus said. “But what’s happening is an enormous amount of wear and tear on the things that you don’t look at until you crack ‘em open when you go to the depot. Bearings. Suspension systems. Transmission systems.”
The Money
“The war is putting a tremendous amount of pressure” on service budgets, Magnus said. War costs are exceeding all of the services’ budgets, and supplemental funds are falling short. “But when you’re at war, you don’t stop combat operations because you think you’re about to run out of your account in the treasury,” he said.
To help pay for operations, the Corps — like the Army, Air Force and Navy —is scouring programs to find money that, while allocated, might not be used in the current year. For now, Magnus said, major programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle are not being cut. “We have taken money out of a lot of programs, a lot of small ones that really got nicked pretty well.”
The cost of war also is having an effect in many nonmilitary areas.
“We have taken money away from infrastructure, facilities sustainment, repair and modernization — stuff that repairs roofs and roads and underground utilities,” Magnus said. “Really, really important, but not as important as putting armor on Humvees and medium tactical vehicles.”
Moving money between programs is normal, Magnus said, but this year, “we’ve a really urgent reason to reprogram money.”
Still, it might not be enough to get past Sept. 30, the end of the budget year.
The People
Marines themselves are holding up best, Magnus said. He regularly reads unofficial Web sites where Marines and their families talk about the issues they’re facing.
“There is a stress on them, but I think they’re doing marvelously well,” he said.
One of the biggest factors for families is the unpredictable nature of the deployments to Iraq. Service officials have indicated the current seven-month tour for the 25,000 Marines now in Iraq could be extended to 10 months. Two 2,400-member Marine Expeditionary Units scheduled to begin regular seagoing deployments in September and October already have been told they’re leaving in July and August, heading for Iraq. Service planners don’t know if the next large group of Marines to deploy to Iraq will leave in September or early next year, and that in turn will affect those scheduled to come over in spring 2005.
As to whether Marines can hold up under the continued stress of operations, Magnus expressed confidence.
“They’re not Gen-X. This is not the Calvin Klein generation,” he said.
Then, referring to a famous action in the Korean War where a few Marines held off thousands of communists, he added, “These are the grandkids of the Marines who went to the Chosin.
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS
Thirty-two months of continuous warfare are taking their toll on the U.S. Marine Corps.
Battling insurgents in Iraq, chasing Taliban in Afghanistan, peacekeeping in Haiti and patrolling the Horn of Africa from Djibouti, the Corps is “exactly where we always wanted to be, over the globe,” said Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Magnus. “But it stretches the force.”
The 177,000-strong Corps is being stretched in ways planners never anticipated. More than 25,000 Marines are in Iraq. Another 5,000 are on their way or soon to head there. More than 4,000 are in Afghanistan. Nearly 1,500 are in Haiti, about 1,600 are in Djibouti and Africa, and around 14,000 remain stationed on Okinawa. More than half the Corps has been deployed since October 2001, many Marines for two and three times. And the strain is beginning to show.
“We can’t do that indefinitely,” Magnus, deputy commandant for programs and resources, told reporters in Washington on June 8. The Corps, he said, simply isn’t big enough to “do continuous war, year after year after year.”
The strain is showing on the service’s people, its equipment and its budget, even as the Marines are being ordered to accelerate deployments to Iraq and extend the time in-country of those already there.
The Equipment
At the top of the stress list, said Magnus, a veteran CH-46 helicopter pilot, is the service’s fleet of AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters.
“We’re about tapped out for Marine aviation,” he said. “This is a rotary-wing and C-130 war,” referring to the helicopters and KC-130 Hercules aircraft that bear the brunt of Marine aviation operations in Iraq.
The KC-130 transport aircraft of VMGR-352 from Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Calif., and VMGR-234, a reserve squadron from Fort Worth, Texas, have been busy moving troops, equipment, supplies and food between the Marines’ bases in Iraq and Kuwait.
The Marines’ helicopters — CH-46 Sea Knights, CH-53E Super Stallions, UH-1N Hueys and Super Cobras — are in big demand, too. Super Cobra gunships, which can be heavily armed for attack missions, are escorting ground convoys, transport helicopters and medevacs in Iraq.
The ground threat from rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire and anti-air missiles forced the Corps earlier this year to fund and install survivability systems, such as chaff dispensers and radar suppressors, and some aircraft have gotten extra armor protection.
But the turbine engine blades of the Cobras, Magnus said, “are being eaten alive by the fine, hard sand of the Arabian peninsula.”
The demands of combat and resulting decline in regular maintenance is leading to fewer Cobras being available, meaning AV-8B Harrier and F/A-18D Hornet jets are taking over many of the reconnaissance and surveillance missions previously handled by the helos. But that too has a price: It’s “more expensive to drive an F-18 around the sky than it is to drive around a Cobra,” he said.
Although the number of spare parts to keep the helicopters running has been increased, Magnus sees the wear-and-tear problem getting worse in the near future. “This equipment is obviously under accelerated usage,” he said, “so it’s going to have a shortened life span” — and will need replacement sooner than budgets now call for.
Fighting an insurgent war in Iraq also has meant vehicles need greater protection, resulting in a major “up-armoring” of a significant portion of the Corps’ 18,000 tactical wheeled vehicles. More than 3,000 vehicles already have been hardened. That total is expected to top 4,000 by summer’s end. But the added weight of protection causes vehicles to wear out earlier, and the pace of operations has seen regular depot-level maintenance fall by the wayside.
“It can’t go to the depot, because we’re using it in a war,” Magnus said. “But what’s happening is an enormous amount of wear and tear on the things that you don’t look at until you crack ‘em open when you go to the depot. Bearings. Suspension systems. Transmission systems.”
The Money
“The war is putting a tremendous amount of pressure” on service budgets, Magnus said. War costs are exceeding all of the services’ budgets, and supplemental funds are falling short. “But when you’re at war, you don’t stop combat operations because you think you’re about to run out of your account in the treasury,” he said.
To help pay for operations, the Corps — like the Army, Air Force and Navy —is scouring programs to find money that, while allocated, might not be used in the current year. For now, Magnus said, major programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle are not being cut. “We have taken money out of a lot of programs, a lot of small ones that really got nicked pretty well.”
The cost of war also is having an effect in many nonmilitary areas.
“We have taken money away from infrastructure, facilities sustainment, repair and modernization — stuff that repairs roofs and roads and underground utilities,” Magnus said. “Really, really important, but not as important as putting armor on Humvees and medium tactical vehicles.”
Moving money between programs is normal, Magnus said, but this year, “we’ve a really urgent reason to reprogram money.”
Still, it might not be enough to get past Sept. 30, the end of the budget year.
The People
Marines themselves are holding up best, Magnus said. He regularly reads unofficial Web sites where Marines and their families talk about the issues they’re facing.
“There is a stress on them, but I think they’re doing marvelously well,” he said.
One of the biggest factors for families is the unpredictable nature of the deployments to Iraq. Service officials have indicated the current seven-month tour for the 25,000 Marines now in Iraq could be extended to 10 months. Two 2,400-member Marine Expeditionary Units scheduled to begin regular seagoing deployments in September and October already have been told they’re leaving in July and August, heading for Iraq. Service planners don’t know if the next large group of Marines to deploy to Iraq will leave in September or early next year, and that in turn will affect those scheduled to come over in spring 2005.
As to whether Marines can hold up under the continued stress of operations, Magnus expressed confidence.
“They’re not Gen-X. This is not the Calvin Klein generation,” he said.
Then, referring to a famous action in the Korean War where a few Marines held off thousands of communists, he added, “These are the grandkids of the Marines who went to the Chosin.