By Geoff Fein
The Marine Corps must continue to increase investment in recapitalizing its force, not only to sustain current levels, but to meet future needs, according to a top Marine Corps official.
Looking back 20 years, the Marine Corps was spending on average about $1.4 billion a year in investments…capitalization, said Lt. Gen. John Castellaw.
But a study last year done by the Center for Naval Analyses showed the Marine Corps, historically, needed to invest about $3.1 billion to $3.3 billion, he added.
Although investment was low 10 years to 15 years ago, with the outbreak of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps saw its investment spike upward thanks to supplementals, Castellaw noted.
“It went up about $3 billion. Some people will argue that what that means is that we are set for the next few years. My argument to that is, it went backward,” Castellaw said. “It filled up the bathtub that existed before. So what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to invest at close to that $3 billion mark in order to ensure we don’t get back into this bathtub. If we want to sustain this, then we need to spend more than our historical $1.4 billion in investment.”
After 36 years, Castellaw is retiring from service. His last day as deputy commandant for programs and resources was May 9. He will retire from the Marine Corps on July 1, following a ceremony and celebration in Alamo, Tenn.
Castellaw said that he uses battle terms when discussing the struggles for funding with Commandant Gen. James Conway.
“It really is a battle inside the Beltway for resources. You fight inside the department for your share of the pie, then you fight within the DoD overall, and then you go over to the Hill and you fight over there for resources,” he said. “So you go through a series of battles and then you emerge with whatever you have successfully defended.”
“It truly is a battle…a stressful environment…particularly in years like this one where not only are we dealing with internal factors but you’ve got a presidential campaign underway and congressional campaigns that are also playing into this,” he added. “So you have this maelstrom of events that are sort of interacting with what you would hope to be a stable defendable, effective, efficient program that gives the nation what it needs in terms of a viable defense at a cost that is reasonable.”
The Marine Corps has been looking closely as it goes through the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) ’10 to build upon and improve its core capabilities: shoot, move, protect and communicate, Castellaw said.
Unmanned Aerial Systems are an enabler for some of those capabilities, he added. “First of all, UAS will give us the capability to see where we want to maneuver and shoot.”
Before Castellaw left his position as deputy commandant for aviation, the Marine Corps began an expansion of its Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons (VMU), converting from Pioneer UAV Inc‘s. Pioneer to AAI Corp‘s. [TXT] Shadow UAV.
“Ultimately we will have four VMUs, three in active and one in reserve. And that may not be where we stop as we find more capabilities,” Castellaw said. “We are also working in the joint environment with Tier II which will be the follow-on to the ScanEagle.”
Boeing‘s [BA] ScanEagle has provided the Marine Corps an interim capability while the service looks for a Tier II platform. Boeing operates and maintains ScanEagle through a service contract with the Marine Corps, Castellaw noted.
While the Marine Corps sees no need to expand in the large UAV market, which is dominated by Northrop Grumman‘s[NOC] Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems‘ Predator, the service is looking at the man-portable systems and is replacing AeroVironment‘s Dragon Eye UAV with the company’s Raven B, he added.
“As we look at UAS, at how they can interact with other capabilities, one of the areas that we will try to improve our capabilities is in EW (electronic warfare),” Castellaw said. “We are working with reprogrammable payloads and we are working [to] give precision EW capability for our UAS. So I think we are going to continue to expand not only the numbers but what we do with UAS.”
And with Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] F-35B short take off vertical landing (STOVL) Joint Strike Fighter on the horizon, the service is looking at how it can put together a complete electronic attack, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance package using both manned and unmanned systems, Castellaw said.
There have been efforts to see if the F-35B could be moved a bit to the left, as the Marine Corps juggles keeping its older Hornets and Harriers flying until the F-35B reaches the service. Castellaw noted Lockheed Martin has looked at how it might be able to take advantage of advances in simulation to shave some time off the plane’s schedule.
“Maybe [there are] some areas we do not have to do the amount of actual physical [testing] with the airplane that we used to do,” he said. “If you have ever been put to Lockheed in Ft. Worth [Texas], you can see the tremendous simulation they’ve got where they take the components and put them through the various parameters. That’s one area Lockheed’s program office and the Marine Corps will continue to look at. Can we inch it back over a little bit?”
Another issue for the Marine Corps has been the need to fund additional amphibious ships, in particular more Northrop Grumman-built San Antonio-class LPD-17s. Under the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, only nine LPDs have been planned.
In its mark up of the FY ’09 Defense Authorization Act, the Senate Armed Services Committee reduced funding for the Navy’s maritime preposition force future (MPF(F)) by $170 million. Those funds were combined with other funds for a total of $323 million in advanced procurement for another LPD-17.
While Castellaw acknowledges the need for more LPDs, he wanted to be clear that both the amphibious ships and the MPF(F) are equal in terms of priority for the Marine Corps. “Both are essential elements of sea basing, so we want to see both amphibious ships and MPF(F) move forward.”
LPDs provide the Marine Corps a great ship, he added.
Castellaw’s first ship was an LST.
“Go down and look at comparisons of the ships we are getting now in terms of survivability, capability, the habitability…[there is] no real comparison,” he said. “What we identified as our requirements…11 of them, and 11 LSDs and 11 of the big decks. That will give us about 30 at any one time that can go to sea and that will support the agreement that we have with the Navy to provide to a MEB’s (Marine Expeditionary Brigades) lift worth of lift simultaneously.”
But the Marine Corps needs the MPF(F), too.
“We’re going to press our argument very strongly that we need to continue to have that capability particularly in those areas that we found during OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) I,” Castellaw said. “An Army division couldn’t come across the shore because it couldn’t find a port that would let them in. This will give us the capability to off-load the fight and get all the sustainment.”
One platform that the Marine Corps is very concerned with is General Dynamics‘ [GD] Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV). The program has gone through realignment over the years as the service has worked to cut cost, weight and improve reliability. But EFV, like amphibious ships and MPFF(F), is a needed platform, Castellaw said.
When he first came into the Marine Corps, Castellaw was a amphibious track vehicle platoon commander. “I had 10 AAV7s, brand new…[they] smelled just like a new car. Here I am 36 years later I am retiring but they are not.”
“We still got 1,000 of them, and we will do what is necessary to extend their lives and keep them operating until we get EFV,” he added.
The Marine Corps has heard the concerns of lawmakers who would prefer EFV have a V-shaped hull much like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in Iraq, Castellaw said.
“We take very, very seriously–the threats to our armored vehicles. What we want to do is to provide what is necessary to provide the maximum amount of protection, while allowing for tactical capability to the Marines that are operating them,” he said. “It is extremely difficult to put a cocoon of steel around you that can’t be penetrated. A lot of times the best defense is TTPs (techniques, tactics and procedures), and speed and agility. In our view there’s always a balance of speed, agility and weight, which right now with our current technology equates to armor. So what we will do, we’ll have EFVs that will have the capability of putting bottom armor and armor in other areas where we need it…based on what the threat is in the operating environment.”
Castellaw said he has had some very frank and open discussions with lawmakers over added protection for the EFV.
“We have taken the recommendations and we have explored them and we will continue to. We want to do the best we can,” he said. “We are not closing off any options that we may have overlooked and other people are suggesting we look at closely. We take them seriously and we will explore them seriously.”