The Bunker: Hybrid Hardware Hijinks

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: The Marine Corps’ desire to fly aircraft capable of short takeoffs and landings has saddled the Pentagon with a pair of costly and troubled platforms, as two new reports make clear; and more.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

The Marines’ costly hardware headaches

The Marines hold a storied place in U.S. military history. It lets them get away with stuff that wouldn’t pass muster in the other services. The Marine Corps’ increasingly dubious role is to attack from the sea “organically” — all by itself. While there hasn’t been a major amphibious assault since Inchon during the Korean War in 1950, the corps sees that mission as its raison d'être. But that requires aircraft that don’t need the big flight decks of Navy carriers and can deploy aboard smaller amphibious assault ships. Predictably, such V/STOL — Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing — aircraft (PDF) are more complicated and costly.

Forthwith, Exhibits A and B:

TILT-ROTOR TROUBLES

The average Marine V-22 flies only 20 minutes a day

The Pentagon’s V-22 fleet continues to fly on a wing and a prayer, but its time aloft, and readiness for flight, are diving. The tilt-rotor aircraft — it takes off and lands like a helicopter but then rotates its rotors and engines forward to fly like a turboprop airplane — is an engineering marvel. But whether it’s affordable — and safe — remain in doubt 35 years since it first flew.

The Marines love it, because it gives them the greater range and speed they “need” for those mythical amphibious assaults. The Army initially spearheaded the program but bailed out over cost concerns in 1988 (PDF). Yes, that’s how long it’s been kicking around. The Air Force and Navy have bought relatively few. Plus, it’s expensive — $120 million (PDF) a copy to buy, and $80,000 (PDF) an hour to fly.

The latest evidence concerning the V-22’s utility comes from an Excel “data and supplemental information” spreadsheet. It’s appended to a November 18 Congressional Budget Office analysis of the military’s rotary-wing fleet, which includes both conventional choppers and the tri-service V-22.

The V-22 numbers are grim:

-- The availability rate of the Marine/Navy V-22 fleet, meaning an aircraft that is assigned to an operational squadron and capable of performing at least one of its assigned missions, peaked at 52.8% (PDF) in fiscal year 2013. It fell to 31.4% in 2023, the lowest since it became operational in 2007. The two services fly 338 V-22s (PDF), nearly all flown by the Marines to carry troops. In contrast, the availability of the Army’s workhorse, the UH-60 Black Hawk, topped 70% (PDF) in 2023. The average number of annual flight hours flown by a Marine/Navy V-22 hit a record high of 239 (PDF) in 2008, during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It dropped to 123 in 2023, also a record low for the operational fleet. That works out to 20 minutes a day. “Although the availability and use of aircraft typically diminish with age, the decrease in availability and use of DoN’s [the Department of the Navy’s] V-22 tiltrotor aircraft is nonetheless noteworthy,” the CBO, um, noted.

-- The Air Force isn’t doing much better. Its V-22 availability rate crested at 60.9% (PDF) in 2017. It fell to 33%, a record low, in 2023. The service had 52 V-22s (PDF), used primarily for special-operations missions, through 2023. The report noted that the Air Force V-22 crash in Japan last November that killed eight — leaving the service with 51 V-22s — happened early in fiscal 2024 and “does not affect the data analyzed here.” The average number of flight hours flown by an Air Force V-22 peaked at 325 (PDF) in 2009, and fell to 164, also a record low, in 2023. That’s 27 minutes per V-22 per day.

The V-22s were grounded for three months following the November crash. While investigators blamed a faulty gearbox and pilot error (of course) for the crash, the precise trigger remains unknown. On November 25, three lawmakers called for the fleet to be grounded again until that safety issue is resolved, the same day a V-22 reportedly caught fire and was taken out of service.

LATEST F-35 FOLLY

Fighter eludes critical report

The F-35 is a Swiss army knife of a warplane. It was force-fed into three military services — the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines — and has ended up as a lousy compromise. Its design was driven by the Marines’ desire for a warplane with a swiveling nozzle that could take off and land vertically from those smaller amphibious warships. The Pentagon pressed the other services to adjust their blueprints to accommodate the Marines.

“This is a jobs program for Marine aviation,” retired general Merrill McPeak, Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994, told The Bunker a decade ago. “The idea that we could produce a committee design that is good for everybody is fundamentally wrong.” He scoffed at the Marine demand for a plane that can land vertically, saying, “The idea of landing on a beach and supporting your troops close up from some improvised airfield, à la Guadalcanal, is not going to happen.”

Problems continue to fester, according to a recently declassified report by the Defense Department’s Office of Test and Evaluation. The Center for Defense Information here at the Project On Government Oversight obtained the report under the Freedom of Information Act. “While the overall conclusions of the report obtained by POGO are obscured by redaction, the testing office’s F-35 report identifies numerous deficiencies that one might expect would make it impossible to conclude that the F-35 is ‘ready for combat,’” CDI director Greg Williams said November 21.

The 382-page report (PDF) shows the plane is plagued by reliability and maintenance delays, and guns that apparently still can’t shoot straight. This follows six years of combat testing for the F-35, which at $442 billion (PDF) for 2,470 jets is the costliest program in Pentagon history. “The overall reliability, maintainability and availability of the U.S. fleet remains below service expectations,” the Pentagon’s chief weapons-tester said in the report.

The Pentagon green-lighted full F-35 production shortly after the report was completed in February. “The rapid approval despite serious unresolved issues,” Williams said, “highlights the need for more effective congressional oversight.”

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Help wanted!

The nascent Trump administration is considering a pair of defense financiers for the Pentagon’s No. 2 slot, which “could come as welcome news for the hundreds of new defense startups that have entered the military market in recent years,” the Wall Street Journal reported November 24.

→ Feeling a draft?

Congress is weighing how to make registering for a possible U.S. military draft automatic rather than voluntary, as the share of young American men registering has slipped to 84%, Hope Seck reported November 19 at Sandboxx.

→ Trust deficit

The U.S. military is losing the public’s trust and needs to rebuild it, Army Lieutenant Colonel Luke High wrote November 21 at West Point’s Modern War Institute’s website.

The Bunker is thankful — this week and every week — for your trust. Consider forwarding this on to a friend so they can subscribe here.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.