Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit tcml-4

by Tom Clancy

  M923 5-Ton Truck

  No implement of war seems less glamorous than the 5-ton truck, but none is more vital, or causes more sleepless nights for the commander. During World War II, the rapid advance of General Eisenhower's armored spearheads was only made possible by a stream of rugged, reliable GM 4X6 trucks. Today's 5-ton trucks are very similar to that 1940s-era design, except that diesel engines replace the old gasoline models. Unfortunately, today's 5-ton trucks are also very old. To put it simply, the Marines' truck fleet is worn out and undersized. With 8,300 vehicles in inventory, you might think there are plenty of trucks to go around, but large numbers of them are tied up on maritime prepositioning ships, in depots, and in support of fixed bases in the rear.

  The term "5-ton" describes the nominal cargo capacity, not the empty weight of the vehicle, which is 21,600 1b/9,800 kg. The 5-ton is 25.6 ft/7.8 m long and 8.1 ft/2.5 m wide, and has three axles. The two rear axles are powered and have twin tires on each side, which are tied to a five-speed automatic transmission. The engine is a six-cylinder in-line, liquid-cooled diesel of 250 hp, and the fuel tanks hold 81 gal/306 L, sufficient to take the truck 350 mi/560 km down the highway. The 24-volt electrical system is sufficient to power a radio when one is fitted, and many are also equipped with SLGR GPS receivers. Engineer units are equipped with dump truck and wrecker models, which are subject to particularly severe wear and tear. A major rebuild and SLEP are currently under way to keep the Corps' truck fleet rolling into the 21st century.

  Logistics Vehicle System (LVS)

  In the category of cross-country heavy military trucks, the Oshkosh Corporation of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, despite stingy and uncertain budgets and extremely stringent requirements, has engineered a line of world-class vehicles. For the Corps, Oshkosh has adapted the Army's HEMTT family of ten-ton 8x8 trucks to produce a transporter good enough for Marines. Known as the Logistics Vehicle System (LVS), it provides the heavy lift capability for expeditionary Marine units. The LVS consists of two units, a standard Mk 48 Front Power Unit (FPU), and a variety of specialized trailers or Rear Power Units (RPUs). The FPU can be attached to any RPU through an articulation joint to produce a flexible 8x8 vehicle. The FPU has a 445-hp liquid-cooled, turbocharged diesel engine. The spacious and fully enclosed cab seats two drivers and provides exceptional visibility. The FPU is 8 ft/2.4 m wide and 8.5 ft/2.6 m high at the roofline, and weighs 12.65 tons/11,470 kg unloaded.

  A Marine Logistics Vehicle System (LVS) transporter truck on maneuvers in Norway in 1994.

  OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO

  The LVS is equipped with a four-speed automatic transmission, and the vehicle can ford water up to 5 ft/1.53 m deep without special preparations. The fuel tanks hold 150 gal/568 L, providing a nominal range of 450 mi/725 km. The RPUs include cargo trailer, wrecker, crane, and ribbon-bridge variants. The LVS family of vehicles are a critical link in the supply chain that moves bulk fuel, ammunition, and supplies from the beachhead or landing area to the forward combat elements of the landing force. The Marine Corps operates 1,584 of these useful transports, assigned to special combat service support motor transport units. A deployed MEU (SOC) would normally have at least two of these trucks, assigned as diesel fuel carriers.

  Marine Corps Aviation

  Marine aviation has always had two goals. The first is to support Marines on the ground, and the second is to remain expeditionary, which is another word for mobile and deployable. Today, the Corps deploys one of the most unusual and focused air forces in the world. Its aircraft have been specially selected to support the Marine mission, and this has put the Marines frequently at odds with the leadership of both the nation and the other services. In these conflicts, the Marines have usually won out in the end. In the 1970s, the Administration of President Jimmy Carter killed — several times in fact — the AV-8B Harrier II and CH-53E Super Stallion programs, claiming that they were not necessary or useful. Luckily, the Corps has an awesome Congressional lobby, and was able to sustain the programs until the coming of the 1980s and President Ronald W. Reagan. Today the Marines are winning another battle with the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor medium transport aircraft, which then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney actually canceled back in 1989. No matter how you look at it, when Marines see something they really want, they will do what is necessary to get it.

  McDonnell Douglas/British Aerospace AV-8B Harrier II

  Harriers are a species of marsh hawk native to the British Isles that preys on rodents and small reptiles. Not a bad description of the tactical role of this unique British-designed and internationally built aircraft that is now in service with the U.S. Marine Corps. In the 1950s, Sir Sidney Camm of the Hawker Aircraft Company (already a well-respected British aircraft designer) began sketching ideas for a jet plane capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The British Government, believing that guided missiles would soon make the manned fighter aircraft obsolete, showed little interest; but the company invested its own funds to build a prototype, the P.1127, which made its first flight on November 19th, 1960, after a series of tethered hovering tests.

  Over the years, designers and engineers have proposed many bizarre solutions to the VTOL problem, but the P.1127 used one of the oddest solutions yet, and it proved to be a winner. The key is the Pegasus engine (designed by Dr. Stanley Hooker of the Bristol-Siddeley Engine Company), a turbofan without a tailpipe. The jet exhaust is vented through an array of four nozzles that swivel through an angle of more than 90deg. The concept is called "vectored thrust." Point the nozzles straight down, and the plane goes straight up. Point the nozzles aft and the plane zooms off into level flight. To land, reverse the sequence. Sir Sidney observed that, kinetically speaking, it was easier to stop and then land than to land and then try to stop. He was right. Tactically, a VTOL aircraft does not require a ten-thousand foot concrete runway; it can operate from a parking lot, a clearing in the woods, or even a tennis court (if you take down the net). During the Cold War on NATO's Central Front, a Soviet surprise attack might have knocked out most of the concrete runways on Day One, but a force of VTOL fighters, well dispersed and hidden, could have carried on the fight, waging a kind of aerial guerrilla warfare.

  A pair of Marine AV-8B Harrier II Plus's from VMA-542 at MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., on a training mission over the Atlantic. These aircraft are equipped with APG-65 radars so that they can employ the AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile.

  MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS

  The test successes of the P.1127 led to an order in the early 1960s from the Ministry of Aviation for an evaluation unit of nine improved aircraft, under the type designation Kestrel FGA.1 (Fighter, Ground Attack). Pilots from the Royal Air Force (RAF), the U.S. Navy and Air Force (six were shipped to the Navy's flight test center at Patuxent River, Maryland, for evaluation), and the new West German Luftwaffe were invited to test-fly the Kestrel. In February 1965, the RAF ordered the first pre-production batch of VTOL fighters, under the name Harrier, and on August 31st, 1965, the new aircraft made its first flight. (Hawker Siddeley was eventually merged into British Aerospace, while Rolls-Royce took over Pegasus engine production.)

  For U.S. naval aviators, wedded to their big deck aircraft carriers, the poky little Harrier (no radar, no afterburner, and look at that cramped cockpit!) was unimpressive in comparison with their mighty new supersonic McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs. But for USMC pilots, traditionally committed to delivering close air support that flies really, really close, it was love at first sight. There is a legendary story of how two Marine officers quietly went to the 1969 Paris Air Show (with the backing of the Corps leadership), walked up to the British Aerospace chalet, and told the British representative, "We're here to fly the Harrier!" The rest is history. With the enthusiastic support of the Commandant, the Marines used their considerable political clout to win budget approval for the purchase of a dozen Harriers, modified to carry the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, and designated AV-8A. By 1977, the force had grown to a total of 110 Harriers,
including eight TAV-8A two-seat trainers, equipping four attack squadrons of Marine Air Group (MAG) 32 based at Cherry Point, North Carolina (VMA-223, VMA-231, VMA-542, and VMAT-203). In 1972, the first Harrier detachment went to sea, aboard the USS Guam (LPH-7), and proved highly effective. Unfortunately, by 1985, one trainer and 52 single-seaters had been lost in accidents. Like so many early jet designs, the early Harriers were harshly unforgiving of pilot error, especially during the critical transition between vertical and horizontal flight.

  One of the lessons learned from the early Harriers was that vertical takeoff was usually both wasteful and unnecessary. A short horizontal takeoff roll saved a great deal of fuel, made it possible to carry a greater payload, and greatly eased the tricky transition from vertical to horizontal flight. In military organizations, every new concept generates a new acronym; hence STOVL, "Short Takeoff, Vertical Landing." For their second-generation Sea Harriers, the British further refined this technique with the development of the "ski jump." Providing an inclined ramp at the bow of a ship, or the end of an expeditionary airfield, gave the aircraft an extra "kick" at the moment of takeoff, and placed it in a safer nose-high attitude in the event of an engine flameout. During the South Atlantic war of 1982, both RAF Harriers and Royal Navy Sea Harriers proved the validity of the concept under difficult combat conditions. Suddenly, the Harrier had become a war-winner. Spain and India ordered various models of Harrier to operate off their small forces of aircraft carriers, and the little aircraft began to develop an international following.

  A Marine AV-8B Harrier II of VMA-231, assigned to HMM-264, sits on the deck of the USS Wasp (LHD-1). Six of these birds from MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., were assigned to the air component of the 26th MEU (SOC) for their 1995/96 cruise.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  In U.S. naval aviation circles, where doctrine prohibits using the word "small" in the same sentence with "aircraft carrier," the Harrier was regarded as an aberration; and the Marines had to fight a series of bitter budget battles during the late 70s and early 80s to keep the program alive. But they did more than that. In cooperation with British Aerospace, McDonnell Douglas proposed an improved "big wing" version of the Harrier, the AV-8B, Harrier II, which entered service in 1984. The Marines originally hoped to procure 336 of these aircraft to equip every light attack squadron. But by the end of 1993, only some 276 were delivered, including 17 two-seat TAV-8B trainers. At the beginning of 1995, the Marine Harrier force, a small community of eight 20-plane squadrons, was evenly split between the East (Atlantic) and West (Pacific) Coasts. One squadron from Yuma has often been forward-deployed on rotation to Iwakuni, Japan. Squadrons provide detachments of six aircraft for six-month deployments aboard amphibious ships around the world.

  The key feature of the AV-8B is an advanced graphite-epoxy composite wing, with integral fuel tankage providing up to 100 % greater range than the AV-8A. A built-in-air-refueling probe makes it possible to extend the range even further. The larger wing provides six hard-points, rather than the four on the AV-8A, a 50 % increase in armament options. The engine intakes and nozzles were redesigned to reduce drag, and an automatic stability-augmentation system was provided, with small "puffer" jets at the nose, tail, and wingtips, using high-pressure bleed air from the engine. The landing gear is unusual, with a steerable nosewheel and twin-wheel main gear retracting into the fuselage; spindly outriggers at half-span on the wings retract rearward, where the wheels dangle freely in the slipstream.

  Visually, the Harrier's most distinctive feature is the sharp angle at which the wings droop downward from root to tip; aeronautical engineers call this "anhedral." This helps to trap a cushion of air under the wing during VTOL operation. The wingspan is 30 ft, 4 in./9.25 m, small enough to fit on shipboard elevators without the added design complexity and weight penalty of folding wings. The Harrier's length is 46 ft, 4 in./14.12 m, and the Harrier does not have (or need) a tailhook. Empty weight is only 13,086 1b/5,936 kg, compared with an F/A-18C fighterbomber, which tips the scales at 24,600 1b/11,182 kg empty! Maximum vertical takeoff weight is 18,930 lb/8,587 kg, while maximum horizontal takeoff weight is 31,000 1b/14,061 kg, showing the dramatic benefit of a short takeoff roll.

  The heart of the Harrier is the Pegasus vectored thrust engine, which gives it such unique qualities. Over the years, the engineers at Rolls Royce have managed to tweak additional thrust out of the Pegasus engine through a series of incremental upgrades. These are shown in the table below:

  Maximum speed in a "clean" (without external stores) configuration at sea level is 661 mph/1,065 kph. A new bubble canopy greatly improves the pilot's view to the sides and rear. The original twin 30mm ADEN-DEFA cannon (a joint British-French design from the late 1950s) in removable pods under the fuselage have been replaced by the awesome five-barrel rotary 25mm General Electric GAU-12, with the gun in one pod and a three hundred-round ammunition magazine in the other. There are six underwing hard-points, and one on the centerline. The four inboard hard-points have plumbing to accommodate 300-gal/1,135-L drop tanks; and for air-to-air missions up to four AIM-9 Sidewinder or AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles (AAMs) can be carried. With regards to air-to-ground ordnance, the following maximum loads can be carried along with the GAU-12 gun pods:

  • Up to sixteen Mk 82 500-1b/227-kg general-purpose or Mk 20 Rockeye cluster bombs.

  • Up to six Mk 83 1,000-1b/454-kg general-purpose or CBU-87/89/97 cluster bombs.

  • Up to four 2.75-in./70mm Hydra 70 Rocket pods (each with ten unguided rockets).

  • Up to four AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missiles.

  Accurate delivery of unguided and laser-guided weapons is ensured by the Hughes AN/ASB-19 Angle Rate Bombing Set (ARBS). In addition, an ALR-67 radar warning receiver and ALE-39 chaff/flare dispensers are fitted in the tail. In high-threat environments the centerline hard-point would be occupied by an ALQ- 164 or ALQ-167 defensive-electronics-countermeasures (ECM) pod.

  As with so many other weapons systems, the 1991 Persian Gulf War gave the Marines and the Harrier II a chance to prove themselves in combat. Only seventeen days after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, forty AV-8Bs of Marine Attack Squadrons VMA-311 and VMA-542 arrived at Sheikh Isa Air Base (also known as "Shakey's Pizza") in Bahrain after a grueling trans-Atlantic flight. An additional twenty aircraft arrived with VMA-331 aboard the USS Nassau (LHA-4). And at the end of August 1990, VMA-311 moved up the Saudi coast to King Abdul Azziz Air Base. By late December, another squadron had arrived, VMA-231, flying eighteen thousand miles — more than halfway around the world — from Iwakuni, Japan, across the Pacific, the United States, and the Atlantic. As the start of the air war approached, in order to get really close to the action, a forward operating location was established at Tanajib, a helicopter field only 40 mi/64 km south of the Saudi/Kuwait border. The narrow 6,000 ft/ 1,828-m runway provided space for about a dozen Harriers at a time, but a good truck road allowed continuous delivery of fuel and ordnance. The Desert Storm air campaign plan envisioned holding the Harriers in reserve until they were needed for direct support of Marines in the ground war. But early on January 17th, 1991, Iraqi artillery batteries fired on Marine positions near the Saudi coastal town of Khafji, and the Harriers were called in to deal with the situation:

  "We launched four aircraft. They made two passes each, releasing the one-thousand-pound bombs right onto the artillery pieces themselves.

  We watched the video of the sortie, and you could actually see the big 122mm guns going end over end as though they were toys."

  — Lieutenant Colonel Dick White, USMC, VMA-311

  You can appreciate the skill of the Marine pilots when you remember that these were unguided, "dumb"- bomb attacks. To avoid Iraqi SAMs and gunfire, Harriers tried to stay above 10,000 ft/3,048 m, making targets relatively difficult to spot. The typical attack profile was a 45deg jinking dive at 525-kt/960-kph airspeed, with bomb release at between 10,000 and 7,000 ft/3,048 and 2,134 m. Chaff would be dispensed on the way in to confuse enemy
radar, and flares would be dropped on the way out to decoy heat-seeking SAMs. By the end of the war, Harriers were ranging up to 210 mi/338 km deep into Kuwait to find targets. Pairs of aircraft would attack from different directions, often relying on targeting information from a forward air controller in a low-flying Marine OV-10 Bronco or Navy/Marine F/A-18 Hornet.

  A pair of Marine AV-8B Harrier IIs operate on the deck of the USS Wasp (LHD-1) during operations in a Norwegian fjord in 1994.

  OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO

  During the first week of the air war, Harriers carried one or two Sidewinders for self-defense, but the Iraqi Air Force was neutralized so quickly that no Harrier pilot even saw an enemy aircraft. Of eighty-six Harriers that operated over Kuwait, five were lost to enemy ground fire during the war, and one to a non-combat accident. Since they had experienced the joys of Yuma, Arizona, and Cherry Point, North Carolina, the desert heat of Saudi Arabia was nothing special to the Harrier squadrons, and there were remarkably few problems caused by the blowing powdery sand. In total, Harriers flew 9,353 sorties during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, including 3,380 combat missions, which delivered almost six million pounds of ordnance onto enemy targets. During the war, Harriers rarely flew more than two missions in a day, due to the bad weather.

  During Desert Storm, the Harrier was largely limited to its designed role as a daylight/clear-weather aircraft, due to its lack of radar or precision-targeting electro-optical systems. Since wars don't stop at night or take breaks for bad weather, this was a serious limitation. Beginning in mid-1987 (with initial deliveries in September 1989), sixty AV-8Bs have been converted to Night Harriers through the installation of an FLIR sensor and new cockpit lighting compatible with night-vision goggles. The FLIR, mounted in a fairing above the nose of the aircraft, projects a green-and-white video image on the pilot's heads-up display (HUD). A color digital moving map display, using data stored on a laser disc, eliminates the hassle of fumbling with paper charts in a dark cockpit.