U.S. scales back JSF, Super Hornet buys: Consolidation of Navy-Marine tactical aviation eliminates 497 aircraft.

Only a year ago, a flag officer described the Navy's aircraft procurement program as "our biggest challenge."

At the time, the officer showed a spending plan that funded 85 aircraft in 2004, with quantities gradually increasing through 2007, when the total aircraft buy soared to 193.

"Our goal is 180 to 210 aircraft per year," said the official.

When the same official recently presented the Navy's budget for the coming fiscal year, the aviation picture had changed dramatically. This time, there was no mention of the 180-to-210 aircraft goal. Rather, the forecast showed that tactical-aviation procurement accounts would be shrinking drastically, largely due to the consolidation of Navy and Marine Corps strike fighter units, slated to begin this year.

The decision to merge the two services' aviation units, dubbed "tac-air integration," was sealed last fall, when then-Commandant Gen. James L. Jones and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark signed a "memorandum of agreement." Part of the deal is to transfer the base of operations for six Marine squadrons of F/A-18 strike fighters, from land to Navy aircraft carriers. The six would be added to the four Marines squadrons that already operate from carriers. Each of the 10 squadrons will be assigned to a Navy air wing. Conversely, three Navy fighter squadrons will be relocated to land-based units.

The tac-air consolidation agreement generally stipulates that, in the future, there will be a "seamless integration" of Navy and Marine squadrons, which will "train, deploy and fight side by side," said a Navy spokesman.

The Navy estimated that the integration will save $19 billion in future aircraft procurements.

The cutbacks in future buys most heavily affect the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which will lose 409 aircraft. The F/A-18EIF Super Hornet program will have 88 fewer airplanes.

The JSF program as first conceived included 480 carrier-based aircraft for the Navy and 480 short-takeoff (STOVL) versions for the Marine Corps. The Super Hornet program is being restructured, with fewer E/Fs and the addition of up to 90 G-models, called the EA-18, for electronic warfare missions. The current five-year spending plan includes 56 EA-18s.

When all is said and done, the United States will have 59 Navy-Marine strike fighter squadrons flying 1,140 aircraft. That compares with 64 squadrons in service today, operating 1,637 aircraft.

The Navy will be decommissioning three active-duty and one reserve F/A-18 squadrons, while the Marines expect to decommission one reserve fighter squadron. The services have not yet settled on a schedule for the disbandment of those units.

Joint Strike Fighter

The sizeable drop in future JSF purchases by the U.S. military services, said program officials, should not affect the airplane's estimated unit cost of $37 million for the Air Force version, $47 million for the carrier-based aircraft and $46 million fur the STOVL model.

The JSF program manager, Air Force Maj. Gen. John Hudson, said that foreign sales would help offset the reduced U.S. buys.

"We have baselined our cost estimates for all the models on a total of 3,002 airplanes -- 2,852 for the United States and 150 for United Kingdom," Hudson said at an industry conference. Due to the growing international participation in the program, he said, "The grand totals will more than be made up with additional sales to other partner countries."

Foreign sales, however, will not help the Navy, whose carrier-based JSF is not expected to be purchased by any of the current JSF international partners.

The Air Force, the largest buyer of Joint Strike Fighters, will lose only a small fraction of its original planned quantity -- about 143 from a total buy of about 1,400 airplanes. As is to be expected, critics are questioning the rationale for slashing the Navy/Marine JSF program, without comparable cuts on the Air Force side.

Having the Navy and the Marine Corps bear the brunt of the JSF cuts may not be the wisest move, when one looks at the current geopolitical reality confronting the United States, said Andrew W. Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a non-partisan think tank that advocates military procurement reform.

At a time when warfare is becoming more "expeditionary," and land bases are a tough political sell in many countries around the world, "the threat to forward air bases will grow," Krepinevich said. "The fact of the matter is that tactical aviation is tied to those fixed forward bases. Sometimes we don't get access to those bases for political reasons."

As far as JSF goes, "If we are going to procure lots of these systems and put them on forward air bases, we are going to have to address that problem somehow." The concern about future access to air bases became a front-burner issue nearly 10 years ago, when Defense Secretary William J. Perry worried that the 1994 standoff with North Korea would jeopardize the ability of U.S. forces to operate from air bases and ports in the area.

Given the Defense Department's emphasis on "transformation," he said, "if you were to make reductions in the JSF program, you would make them in the areas of JSF where you would be operating off land bases." Referring to aircraft that can operate off mobile offshore bases or ships, he said, "Those would be the last areas where I would make cuts in this program."