Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

The best personal weapons are of little value to the soldier without food, clothing, navigation equipment, and the like. Many such items used by the Marines are developed in Army laboratories and centers. For this reason, many Marines sometimes feel their requirements are held captive by their "big brother" the Army. Let's take a look.

Clothing and Sleeping Gear

The dress uniforms of the Marine Corps may be the smartest and best-looking of all the services, but the basic Battle Dress Uniform (BDU), or "Utilities" as they are known, is nearly identical to what the Army wears. BDUs come in a variety of camouflage patterns, including Woodlands (greens and browns), Desert (beige, brown, and gray), and Urban/Arctic (white, black, and gray), which doubles as a good winter/mountain uniform. BDUs come in various weights, from light knit (a fifty-fifty cotton/nylon rip-stop mix) to quilted high-technology fabrics (Gore-Tex, Supplex, Thermex, and FiberFill) for cold weather. They can be also treated with a waxy substance so that they do not absorb or pass chemical agents onto the skin of the wearer.

Boots are a big problem. Though this situation is changing, the Corps has traditionally had inferior boots for the all-important feet of its Marines. New boots are finally being evaluated and fielded for the Marines. These include the Dannon desert boot, popular in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, as well as a new winter /wet boot system designed to keep feet dry in the worst conditions. The helmet is still the Kevlar "Fritz" design used by the Army, though the first new lightweight Kevlar-29 units are beginning to arrive.

The biggest current challenge for outfitting Marines is clothing for cold- and wet-weather conditions. Historically we associate Marine operations with tropical weather, or more recently, with Middle Eastern deserts, but the Corps has faced arctic missions for over half a century. Since the U.S. occupation of Iceland in 1941, Marines have operated in high latitudes and altitudes. Even today, a Marine brigade's set of equipment is prepositioned in caves around Oslo, Norway, for operations on NATO's northern flank. The Corps is upgrading its mountain and cold-weather equipment, with new pants, parkas, mittens, socks, underwear, and balaclavas (hoods). There is a new four-part sleeping bag system, with inner and outer bags, liner and bivy sack (outer cover), certified for temperatures as low as -40deg F. Along with special cold-weather rations, these make combat operations in alpine regions and cold weather both possible and livable for Marines.

Navigation

In the last few years, navigation has been revolutionized by the NAVISTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). A constellation of twenty-four satellites in medium Earth orbit (about 11,000 mi/17,700 km in altitude) transmits calibrated signals that generate accurate three-dimensional positions. GPS receivers are increasingly portable, rugged, and cheap. Those receivers saw their first military use in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where more than five thousand such systems in aircraft, ships, vehicles, and even handheld units contributed to victory over Iraq. Marines used GPS receivers in aircraft like the F/A-18 Hornet fighter bomber and landing craft like the LCAC, and handheld units in the air-ground liaison control (ANGLICO) teams that controlled artillery fire and airstrikes. GPS gave U.S. forces a major advantage on the battlefield, where knowing the exact time (from the satellite's onboard atomic clocks) and your own position is critical. GPS has emerged as a new kind of public utility, with ever-increasing military and civil applications. While the baseline civilian version is limited to 3-D accuracy of about 100 ft/30.5 m, military GPS signals are accurate to about 9.8 to 16.4 ft/3 to 5 m. Utilizing a code which must be punched into the receiver each day (called P(Y)-code), the military signals have proven so accurate and reliable that guided missiles and bombs can use them for guidance.

Marines have embraced GPS with excitement and anticipation, as systems with embedded GPS arrive in greater numbers each year. Because the Corps is always interested in what technology can do for individual Marines, to make them more dangerous to enemies and safer to themselves, the Marines have worked hard to deliver P(Y)-code man-portable GPS receivers down to the squad level. This is a tough objective, because it requires procuring and fielding tens of thousands of such receivers. There are two current models: the Small, Lightweight GPS Receiver (SLGR, built by Tremble Navigation) and the Portable, Lightweight GPS Receiver (PLGR, from Rockwell International). The "Slugger" and "Plugger" are about the size of portable stereos. Combined with a radio, they enable every Marine (theoretically) to call in artillery and air strikes with accuracy. By the dawn of the new century, every USMC aircraft and vehicle will have a GPS receiver, many of them embedded in navigation and fire-control systems. The eventual goal is to give every Marine an individual GPS navigation capability. General Krulak likes to talk about building a GPS receiver into the butt of every M16, and he is serious about it.

One top priority is a new rescue radio for combat aviators. Current rescue radios assigned to U.S. combat flyers frankly stink. During Desert Storm, by simply direction-finding on their radios, Iraqi forces captured downed pilots before rescue forces could reach them. In the short term, there is a modification of the basic PRC-112 radio, called the Hook-112. The Hook-112 involves the addition of a GPS receiver and a burst transmitter to the basic PRC-112, beaming coordinates to rescue forces without betraying the position of the downed flyer. Further on, there is a system known as the Combat Survival/Evader Locator (CSEL), which will combine a GPS receiver with an almost undetectable satellite terminal into a small, handheld package.

In addition, the Marines will soon deploy a mobile survey system based around a GPS receiver to assist expeditionary units in emplacing artillery sites and other position-critical units. Designed and produced by Trimble Navigation, 40 of these systems have already been bought, with an additional 203 planned for future buys. Trimble is also supplying the Marines with a new generation of super-rugged, P(Y)-code GPS units for use by reconnaissance forces. Called the Miniature Underwater GPS Receiver (MUGR), it is about the size of a Walkman radio. MUGR is fully waterproof, and can actually operate underwater! By using a floating antenna attached by a wire tether, the MUGR allows a reconnaissance force to survey a beach or harbor covertly. These systems represent only the tip of the GPS iceberg. In the near future, expect to see the "Fritz" Kevlar helmets of American troops sporting flat satellite antennas with the ability to send and receive signals.

Communications

By the fall of 1996, the Marines will finally begin their long-awaited move to the Army's Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS). SINCGARS utilizes "frequency hopping" to make its signals difficult to intercept or jam. The 2nd MEF will get the entire suite of SINCGARS radio systems for aircraft, vehicles, and personnel in FY-1996 and FY-97. SINCGARS will be taken to the field by 26th MEU (SOC) during their 1996/97 Mediterranean cruise. The current SINCGARS variants are shown in the table below:

Marines deploy a number of satellite communications systems, ranging from large fixed systems for command posts to backpack models for on-the-scene commanders. The key to military satellite communications is access to the proper frequency channels, which are usually overbooked and the subject of intense competition by users, all of whom need to communicate right now. The Department of Defense maintains a number of satellite communications systems to support military operations. But the high tempo of U.S. military deployments has saturated existing military systems. Every communications satellite has a number of transponders, which provide television or radio channels. Each transponder is assigned according to priorities determined by theater commanders, or even by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. There are simply not enough to go around. As a result, the Defense Department is also a major customer for commercial satellite communications air time from commercial suppliers like INMARSAT and Hughes. The Marines have equipment that operates on most standard satellite frequencies, though the most common is the man-portable UHF TACSAT system. This version, known as the PRC-117D, is carried by a communications specialist, with a backpack battery and transceiver and an attached antenna. Able to transmit voice or data, it works well in the field, though it is a battery hog.

While the Marine Corps has a robust and effective communication architecture today, things are going to be changing fast. Already on the horizon are direct-broadcast /receive commercial satellite phone systems, and military communicators are drooling to get some. Global handheld satellite phones will create a telecommunications revolution that makes current-generation cellular phones look like soup cans connected by a string. For example, Texas Instruments has already developed a two-way satellite antenna that is just a flat square a few inches/centimeters on each side. Requiring only minuscule power to operate, it can be fitted to the roof of an HMMWV, or possibly even the top of a Kevlar "Fritz" helmet. The dream of tying every Marine into a global communications net is now within sight.

Food and Water

Marines might be able to hold a position without fuel and with just the ammunition they are carrying, but without food or water, they will have to surrender or die within a few days. Water is usually no problem; Marines have a ready supply of pure water from the ships that bring them ashore. The Corps has also made a significant investment in portable reverse-osmosis water-purification systems that can be delivered via transport aircraft or prepositioned ships. As a result, other services and coalition allies frequently depend upon Marine units to supply their water needs until follow-on logistics forces arrive.

Food is a different matter. The Corps is a virtual hostage to the meal systems produced by the U.S. Army; it must order food items from the Army logistics system. Options are limited. To begin with, there are Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), heavy, bland, but nourishing rations. Since Desert Storm, MREs have actually gotten heavier, for the Army has chosen to pack more stuff into the brown plastic packages, rather than make what was already inside more appetizing. The result is that field troops tend to throw much of the MRE away, and thus fail to take in the nutrients and calories they need. Though MRE manufacturers like Star Foods already have better products on hand, the Army is not willing to buy them at this time. It is working to issue better MREs, though, and expects to field several new kinds in FY-2000. Because MREs are so unappetizing, American peacekeepers in Bosnia have been using their own money to buy nutritional snacks or freeze-dried camping food; and if they're lucky, they can get some French or British rations. The French version of the MRE, for example, contains fresh bread and pate!

The Marine food service system falls into three levels. The first or "A"-type rations are boxes with three trays of prepackaged food (meats, vegetables, and starches), which are heated in tray boilers and served cafeteria-style to troops. The "B"-type rations are actual meals that are cooked in field kitchens made from locally purchased ingredients as well as dehydrated/freeze-dried ingredients shipped from the U.S. Finally, there are the field rations, normally composed of MREs. I say normally, because when troops enter cold-weather and high-altitude areas, they begin to burn calories at an incredible rate. While a typical Marine might burn about three thousand calories per day under normal environmental conditions, cold weather can double this rate. Since Marines routinely throw out much of the stuff inside the four MREs issued each day, something else is clearly required for cold-weather operations. That is the cold-weather ration. Produced by Oregon Freeze Dry, Inc. (they also produce Mountain House brand camping food) and packaged by Right Away Foods, these rations take up only half as much space and volume as a comparable diet of MREs, and deliver more calories. The ration itself is composed mainly of freeze-dried foods which are contained in a sealed plastic bag. These only require rehydration to make them ready to eat. Given a supply of snow for melting and a heat source, the cold-weather ration can provide an excellent source of hot food for field units. As an added benefit, it is very high in calories (about three thousand per issued ration), and quite light in weight. Compared to MREs, cold-weather rations are quite tasty, and this means that the troops eat everything in the packs issued each day.

As the Marine Corps moves towards the 21st century, it is looking forward to the new varieties of MREs due to be fielded by the Army. But don't be surprised if the USMC finally begins to produce rations to its own design and specification. The Commandant's Battle Lab at Quantico, Virginia, is studying the problem from a purely "Marine" point of view, and may yet produce field rations with an "expeditionary" flavor.

Marine units are primarily infantry-based formations, which depend upon the fire of supporting units to achieve their objectives. Supporting fire must be both accurate and lethal to allow lightly laden Marines to stand up to everything they might have to face, from irregular forces (as encountered in Somalia and Liberia) to conventional military units like those in the Persian Gulf. Without firepower, Marines have to trade their lives to take objectives; and the American people simply will not accept excessive casualties. Thus, Marines have a great professional interest in fire support. Almost every Marine can read a map, use a radio, and call in fire from ships, aircraft, or artillery. A single rifle platoon might receive air support from AV-8B Harrier IIs or AH-1W Super Cobras, and artillery support from a battery of 155mm guns, or an offshore destroyer or cruiser. The Corps is currently suffering a severe shortfall of fire support. In the five years following Desert Storm, the Marines and the Navy lost over half of their total fire-support resources with the decommissioning of the lowa-class (BB-61) battleships and retirement of many support aircraft and artillery units. This is a source of severe concern to Marine and Navy leaders.

Browning M2 .50-Caliber Machine Gun

To listen to an old Marine "Gunny," you would think it was the most beautiful of women. The M2 .50-caliber machine gun is a favorite heavy weapon of Marines and ground troops everywhere. This heavy machine gun provides a base of fire for the rifle platoon and company. It forces the enemy to keep his head down and confronts him with a threat he must neutralize. While he is trying to knock out the damned machine gun, Marines can maneuver onto his flanks or close with his position. A heavy machine gun can shred dry-wall or wooden buildings, or unarmored vehicles. At short ranges and favorable angles it can even penetrate the side or rear plating of armored vehicles. This makes it a very dangerous piece of equipment to have in your pocket.

The "50 cal" first entered service with the U.S. Army in 1919, too late for service in World War I. During the Second World War it was standard armament on American fighter and bomber aircraft, and was widely employed as an anti-aircraft weapon on every kind of ship and ground vehicle. The M2 is an automatic recoil-operated, air-cooled machine gun that weighs 84 1b/38 kg. Recoil-operated means that it uses an ingenious arrangement of levers, cams, and springs to capture part of the recoil energy to extract and eject the spent cartridge case, feed the next round, load it, and fire it. This cycle repeats as long as the gunner holds down the V-shaped trigger located between two hand grips at the rear of the gun. Release the trigger and a latch secures the mechanism in the "open bolt" position, ready to fire again.

The .50-cal can be found in the turret of the AAV-7/LVTP-7 amphibious tractor, on the simple pintle mount on the HMMWV, and on the high-tech coaxial mount on the Avenger air-defense vehicle. The weapons platoon of a Marine rifle company fires it from a hefty 44-1b/20-kg tripod. It takes at least two Marines to carry the weapon, plus men to carry cans of ammunition. The ammunition is assembled into belts with reusable spring clips called "disintegrating links," which are stripped off by the gun's feeder mechanism. The rate of fire is 550 rounds per minute, and gunners are trained to fire short bursts to conserve ammunition. The theoretical maximum range is 4.22 mi/6.8 km, and the M2 has even been used for "indirect fire" at high angles of elevation to create a "fire-beaten zone" on the other side of a hill. In typical battlefield conditions the practical range is about 1.1 mi/1.8 km. The legendary lethality of the M2 derives from the heavy charge of propellant in the cartridge and the superb ballistic shape of the projectile, which has a distinctive "boat tail." There are several ammunition types. These include target-practice (TP), armor-piercing solid-shot, armor-piercing incendiary (API), and high-explosive (HE).

Over the years, many firms have produced the M2 on license from the holders of John M. Browning's original patent. The current contractor producing the M2 for the U.S. Department of Defense is Saco Defense, Inc., and the FY-1994 unit cost was $8,118.00. Its unique combination of range, lethality, durability, and simplicity guarantees that the M2 will soldier on well into the next century. In fact, the last Marine M2 gunner has probably not yet been born.

Mk 19 40mm Machine Gun, Mod 3

Back in the 1960s, deep in the swamps of the Mekong Delta where a well-concealed and heavily armed Viet Cong ambush might lurk around the next bend in the river, crews of U.S. Navy patrol craft discovered that .50-cal machine gun fire was often insufficient to break up an attack. They needed a weapon that could spew out a stream of explosive grenades to suppress enemy forces. To meet this need, the Navy developed the Mk 19, officially classed as a "machine gun," but actually an automatic grenade launcher. The Mk 19 had a long and troubled development cycle, earning the nickname "Dover Dog," after the Delaware arsenal where it was designed. After a series of modifications, it has proven itself in service with the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Mk 19 is an extremely simple weapon using the "blowback" principle. The barrel and receiver assembly recoil against a heavy spring, and as they rebound, the next round is loaded and fired. The weapon fires the same family of 40mm grenades as the M203 launcher attached to the M 16 rifle.

By itself the weapon weighs 72.5 lb/33 kg. It was designed to use the same tripod as the M2 .50-cal. machine gun, but is also found in the turret of the AAV-7/LVTP-7 amphibious tractor. The cyclic rate of fire is from 325 to 375 rounds per minute, but the practical rate of fire is about 40 rounds per minute in short bursts. To achieve the maximum range of 2.2 km/1.37 mi, you have to elevate the weapon to loft the grenades and forget about real accuracy. Practical range for flat-trajectory fire is about 1,500 m/4920 ft. There are several types of ammunition, assembled into disintegrating link belts and transported in metal canisters. The HEDP (high-explosive, dual-purpose) grenade will pierce 2 in./51mm of armor, and spray metal fragments that can kill within 5 m/ 16.4 ft and wound within 15 m/49.2 ft. Other types of ammunition include incendiary, smoke, and tear gas rounds. The Mk 19 is usually found in the weapons platoon of a rifle company and the weapons company of a rifle battalion. One Marine can load and fire the weapon, but it requires a team of three to four to carry it, along with a supply of grenades. It is manufactured by Saco Defense, and the 1994 unit cost was $13,758.00.

Mortars

Mortars are the company or battalion commander's own personal artillery. The mortar is a portable, cheap, and simple weapon: just a metal tube with a bipod elevating bracket and a heavy base plate. You assemble the weapon, aim the mortar at the target, and drop the mortar round down the barrel. The round strikes a firing pin at the bottom of the tube, and off it goes. Limitations of the mortar are its relatively short range and inaccuracy. But this old weapon is now gaining new respect, thanks to the development of precision guided ammunition.

Marines employ two different kinds of mortars. The M224, used in the heavy weapons platoon of the rifle company, is a 60mm weapon weighing only 46.5 lb/21 kg. Maximum range is 2.2 mi/3.5 km. A good crew can sustain a rate of fire of around twenty rounds per minute. The other model, the M252, is used in the heavy weapons company of the infantry battalion. An 81mm weapon, it is based on a 1970s British design, weighs 89 lb/40 kg, and has a maximum range of 3.5 mi/5.6 km. The sustained rate of fire is sixteen rounds per minute. There is a wide variety of ammunition types in each caliber, including high-explosive, smoke, and incendiary rounds. High-explosive rounds can be fitted either with an impact fuse or a proximity fuse that detonates at a preset altitude, showering the target with fragments.

M198 155mm Towed Howitzer

This big gun is one of the more controversial weapons in the Marine arsenal. While it is the Marines' primary field artillery piece, the Corps leadership feels that the M 198 is simply too big and too heavy. Also, it takes up too much space on amphibious lift ships, and in firing position it is too vulnerable, especially when a quantity of ammunition is stacked near the gun. In addition, the M198 has a high center of gravity, which makes it prone to tipping over and being difficult to handle. On the other hand, it uses standard, widely available 155mm ammunition with terrific lethality. Weighing 15,758 1b/7,154 kg, it requires a heavy (5-ton) truck to tow it, along with its eleven-man crew and a supply of ammunition. It can be lifted as a sling load by the CH-53E helicopter. The M198 can hurl a projectile up to 14 mi/22.4 km, and a special rocket-assisted projectile extends this range to 18.6 mi/30 km. The 566 guns in the Marine inventory will serve for at least another decade, until the introduction of a new lightweight howitzer which is under development.

Mk 45 5-in./54 Naval Gun Mount

With the retirement of the Iowa-class (BB-61) battleships, the Navy's gunfire support capability is reduced to one or two of these rifled 5-in./ 127mm weapons on each major surface combatant (cruiser, destroyer, and a few amphibious ships). Built by United Defense's Great Northern Division, the Mk 45 5-in./54 turret has a high degree of automation, sustaining a rate of seventeen rounds per minute. The turret normally operates unmanned, with the six-man Navy crew working below decks. The Mk 45 can throw a 70-1b/31.75-kg projectile to a maximum range of 14 mi/23.6 km, though extended-range ammunition is under development. The main ammunition types are high-explosive and incendiary (white phosphorus). A ship generally carries several hundred rounds per gun in its magazines, and major task forces are accompanied by ammunition ships, which can rapidly replenish the supply, using a UH-46 helicopter.

The Future: The Lightweight Howitzer and Arsenal Ship

Solving the problem of replacing the fire-support assets lost since Desert Storm is a joint Navy/Marine Corps challenge. The most urgent fire-support upgrade is replacement of the M198 155mm howitzer. Six different industrial teams have produced competing designs for a new lightweight howitzer. These include United Defense, Lockheed Martin, Royal Ordnance, and VSEL. In addition to lighter weight, the Marines want a weapon with much longer range (which means a longer barrel) and smaller crew requirements, and a higher rate of fire (which means power-assisted ramming and loading.) Expect to see deliveries in the early years of the next century.

A bigger problem is offshore fire support. Marines really miss those old Iowa-class (BB-61) battleships. Nothing will ever match the spectacular effect of 16-in./406mm shells falling on a target within 25 mi/40 km of a coastline. Over a hundred ships with 5-in./ 127mm guns have left U.S. Navy service, gutting naval gunfire capability. To make up for this drawdown, the Chief of Navel Operations and former Deputy Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Bill Owens conceived the idea of the Arsenal Ship. The Arsenal Ship would replace the lost firepower of the retired Iowa-class (BB-61) battleships by constructing a simple, relatively inexpensive ship packed with missile launch cells — as many as 732 tactical missiles, including Tomahawk and perhaps a version of the Army TACMS. In effect, the arsenal ship would win the war in one salvo, and then reload for the next war. The ship would rely entirely on off-board sensors for targeting. Covered with radar-absorbing coatings, an Arsenal Ship would have virtually no superstructure. Some design studies envision ballast tanks that could be flooded to give the ship extremely low freeboard, making it a very difficult target for enemy anti-ship missiles. Unfortunately, all this thinking hasn't gone very far; and there are practical problems. Not the least of these: The Navy has done virtually nothing to integrate and procure the TACMS missile for naval service, perhaps because it's reluctant to use an Army missile aboard Navy ships (the "not-invented-here" syndrome). Only nuclear submariners have done substantive work on TACMS, since they are desperately looking for new missions for their subs in the post-Cold War period. Whatever happens, supporting fires will be the make-or-break item for continued forced-entry capabilities into the 21st century.

Cambrai, Northern France. 0620 hours on November 20th, 1917. In the misty dawn, the soldiers of the Kaiser's 2nd Army looked out over "No-Man's-Land" and saw over two hundred primitive British tanks lumbering toward them. The Germans opened fire with the Mauser rifles and Maxim machine guns that had made them nearly invincible during three long years in the trenches, and watched in horror as the bullets bounced off of the armor plate. Then, surprisingly, and most uncharacteristically for German infantry, they ran away.

Almost thirty-five years later, near Osan, Korea, on July 5th, 1950, soldiers of the 24th Infantry Division's Task Force Smith had held their roadblock stubbornly for almost five hours against a superior force of invading North Koreans. They were mostly young draftees, but their sergeants were tough World War II combat veterans who knew their business. Then they heard a low rumble that grew to a roar as thirty Russian T-34/85 tanks came down the road. The bazooka teams fired, and watched in horror as the 2.75-in./70mm armor-piercing rockets bounced off the tanks' sharply angled armor plates. Then they did something surprising and uncharacteristic of American infantry. They ran away.

There is a common lesson in these two stories. Tanks scare the crap out of infantrymen who have no way to fight back effectively. To stand up against tanks, foot soldiers need two things: courage and an anti-tank weapon they trust. Good leadership and training will supply the courage. Good ordnance engineers and technicians can supply the weapons. Early tanks were practically blind on the battlefield, and even the best modern tank designs (like the M1A1 Abrams) are visually handicapped. Men on foot can exploit this weakness with great effect. During the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest (1956), Russian T-34s were knocked out by Hungarian freedom fighters, who immobilized the tanks by jamming steel pipes between the tracks and the road wheels, then bombarded them with firebombs made from bottles and gasoline.

Modern portable anti-tank weapons fall into two categories: those light enough for one soldier to carry, and specialist weapons that require a crew and possibly a motor vehicle to haul them around. The Marine Corps has usually followed U.S. Army doctrine, equipment, and tactics for anti-armor combat, but has a few ideas of its own. Let's take a quick look at the portable anti-armor systems used by the Corps.

AT-4

The Marines have always been willing to acquire foreign-made weapons when they are the best of their breed. The AT-4 was acquired to replace the very light and inexpensive 70mm M72 LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon), which is increasingly becoming ineffective against modern battle tanks. The AT-4 is a lightweight, single-shot, disposable version of the "Karl Gustav" 84 mm anti-tank launcher manufactured by FFV in Sweden. The AT-4 can be carried and shoulder-fired by one Marine, but is typically employed in the heavy weapons platoon of a rifle company with a two-man fire team. The second Marine serves as a spotter and carries additional AT-4s for the team. Weighing 14.75 lb/6.7 kg, the 40 — in./1.01-m.-long rocket launcher has a nasty back-blast. Maximum effective range is 300 m/984 ft, and the shaped-charge projectile can penetrate 400mm/15.75 in. of armor plate. The FY-96 unit cost is about $1,100 per AT-4 rocket.

SMAW

The Shoulder Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon (SMAW) is a high-tech descendant of the World War II bazooka — a portable rocket launcher that can disable a tank or knock out a bunker. It was introduced in 1984 as a unique Marine Corps item, because the Army's M72 LAW lacked the accuracy and punch the Marines wanted, and other anti-tank rockets were too heavy. The SMAW is based on an Israeli weapon called the B-300. The 16.6-1b/7.54-kg fiberglass launch tube is 30 in./76 cm long when carried. For firing, you snap a rocket in its disposable sealed canister into the breech end, which extends the total length of the weapon to 54 in./137 cm. The Marines carry 1,364 of these unusual weapons in inventory, and they cost about $14,000.00 each. The SMAW fires two kinds of 83mm rockets — HEDP for use against lightly armored vehicles or buildings, and High-Explosive Anti-tank (HEAT) for use against heavily armored vehicles. Maximum range against a tank is 500 m/1,640 ft, but the SMAW is intended for use at close ranges. Accuracy is ensured by a "spotting rifle" attached to the side of the launcher. This is a British-made 9mm semi-automatic weapon that fires a special tracer round that is ballistically matched to the flight characteristics of the rocket. You hoist the weapon to your shoulder, look through the sight, and fire a spotting round. When you see the spotting round impact on the target, you fire the rocket, with a very high probability of a hit. SMAW works so well that during Desert Storm the Army "borrowed" 150 launchers and five thousand rockets from the Marines.

Hughes MGM-71 TOW-2 Anti-Tank Missile

"TOW" stands for "Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided." This famous family of missiles originally entered service in 1970, and has been continuously improved and upgraded through a series of modifications. TOW first saw combat in 1972 in Vietnam, where it was successfully fired by U.S. Army helicopters against North Vietnamese tanks. In the Marine Corps, TOW is mainly used by specialist anti-tank platoons of heavy weapons companies, mounted on HMMWVs (which carry six missiles), or by anti-tank variants of the eight-wheeled Light Armored Vehicle (LAV-AT, carrying two missiles ready to fire with ten stowed).

The TOW-2 missile is 3.8 ft/1.2m long, about 6 in./150 mm in diameter, and weighs 65 lb/29.5 kg. There are four spring-loaded, pop-out guidance fins at the tail and four wings at mid-body. Like most anti-tank missiles, TOW has two rocket motors, a small kick motor that ejects the missile from the launch tube, and a sustainer that ignites at a safe distance. An unusual feature on TOW is that the rocket exhaust nozzles are on either side of the missile body, to avoid interference with the fine steel guidance wires that stream out from the tail. TOW launchers can interface with a variety of different sighting and control units, and the Marines are currently acquiring an Improved Target Acquisition System (ITAS) from Texas Instruments, which combines a laser range finder, FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared), modular software, and a rechargeable ten-hour battery. TOW-2A uses a tandem warhead for direct attack, and TOW-2B uses a pair of explosively forged projectile warheads from a top-attack flight profile. Otherwise the two versions are identical. Maximum effective range is 3,75 km/2.3 mi.

Rockwell International AGM-114 Hellfire

Hellfire is a long-range high-speed laser-guided missile and it is used exclusively by Marine Cobra attack helicopters, although the U.S. Army and Navy have experimented with firing it from ground vehicles and ships, and Sweden has acquired a coast-defense version fired from a portable tripod mount. Hellfire is primarily an anti-tank missile, with a 20-1b/9-kg dual shaped-charge warhead that can essentially defeat any imaginable tank from any angle. It can also be used successfully against other targets. For example, the opening shots of the 1991 Persian Gulf War were Hellfire missiles fired by Army AH-64 Apache helicopters against Iraqi air defense radar sites.

Hellfire is a big brute of a missile, measuring over 5 ft/1.625 m long, 7 in./178 mm in diameter, and weighing almost 100 lb/45.3 kg. Maximum range depends on the speed and altitude of the firing aircraft, but 5 mi/8 km is claimed. The solid-propellant rocket motor rapidly accelerates the missile to supersonic speed. The seeker in Hellfire's nose is similar to the seeker of a laser-guided bomb. It is programmed to home on a spot of laser light, pulsing with a particular pre-set code. As far as the missile is concerned, it does not matter who or what is lasing the target. The missile can be programmed to "lock on after launch," enabling the designator to remain hidden until the last few seconds of missile flight. The missile can fly a straight-line (direct-attack), or a "lofted" flight path, which provides extended range and an advantageous "top down" impact angle against an armored target.

The Army's Apaches can "self-designate," but Marine AH-1W Cobras do not presently carry a laser designator. In 1996, though, a Night Targeting System will start entering service with the Cobras. But until these system are installed, the Cobras face a tricky tactical coordination problem. They have to rely on "buddy-lasing," which can be performed by a ground-based forward observer, or a Marine UH-1N helicopter equipped with one of the three surviving Nite Eagle laser-designator packages salvaged from the Army's failed Aquila RPV program. During Desert Storm, Marine Cobras, teamed in tank killing units with these few UH-INs, successfully fired 159 Hellfires. Each Cobra can carry up to eight Hellfires on launch rails attached to its stub wings. In FY-1994, Hellfire had a unit cost of abut $35,000.00

Hughes MIM-92 Stinger Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM)

The last time American fighting men had to face an enemy who held air superiority was in 1942 in Tunisia against the German Nazi Luftwaffe and the Fascist Italian Regia Aeronautica. Indeed, the main "air threat" to our ground troops in Vietnam and the 1991 Gulf War were mistaken attacks by "friendly" pilots. Yet, even the most obsolete Third World air force could inflict serious damage on a Marine landing force during the first few critical hours of an operation. While the ground-pounding Marines have great confidence that their brother and sister Marines who fly will be there to help in a pinch, they have always taken the problem of short-range anti-aircraft defense seriously. Each expeditionary Marine unit will normally have an assigned air defense platoon, equipped with the MIM-92 Stinger SAM, which began to replace the much less effective 1960s-vintage Redeye missile in 1982. The platoon includes three HMMWVs, each carrying three-man Stinger teams. The Stinger is sealed in its disposable launch tube at the factory and has a long shelf life. The launch tube clips onto a reusable gripstock assembly, an IFF antenna (this is optional) is attached to the front of the assembly, and the gunner hoists the entire 34-1b/15.4-kg assembly to his shoulder. The gripstock incorporates an audio cueing system, to tell the gunner when the missile seeker is "locked" onto a target. Normally the team will be alerted to the approach of hostile aircraft via radio from a ground-, air-, or ship-based surveillance radar.

Stinger is 5 ft/1.5 m long, 2.75 in./7 cm in diameter, and weighs 12.5 1b/5.7 kg at launch. Range is highly dependent on the speed and direction of the enemy aircraft, but the official specs are 1 km/.6 mi minimum to 8 km/5 mi maximum. Stinger's seeker has an "all-aspect" engagement capability. This means that it does not need a direct line of sight to the hot metal of the engine exhaust; it is sensitive enough to sense that the aircraft is warmer than the sky behind it. Developed by Hughes Missile Systems, the seeker also incorporate a reprogrammable microprocessor, so that software changes can be rapidly implemented to cope with ever-changing enemy countermeasures.

In FY-94, the unit cost of a Stinger missile was $38,000.00, and there were 13,431 in the U.S. Marine inventory. Stinger's first taste of combat was with the British Special Air Service Regiment in the 1982 British-Argentine war. A large number of Stingers were also supplied to Afghan freedom fighters during their long war against Soviet occupation; and they proved incredibly effective in the hands of uneducated but highly motivated gunners. Stinger has an impact fuse for direct hits and a proximity fuse that can turn a near miss into a kill by showering the target with fragments. There is also a timed self-destruct, so that live missiles do not come down on the heads of friendly troops.

The most exciting new Stinger development for the Marines is the Avenger air-defense vehicle. This is integrated by Boeing using the chassis of an HMMWV with a rotating turret that incorporates a FLIR, a laser range finder, an M2 .50-cal. machine gun, and reloadable canisters for eight missiles. A pair of Avengers will be normally be assigned to the Stinger platoon of a MEU (SOC). Combined with the three man-pack teams, it gives the MEU (SOC) a rudimentary air-defense capability. When combined with an offshore SAM umbrella from escorting surface ships, and perhaps the air-to-air capabilities of the MEU (SOC)'s embarked Harrier detachment, it gives the Marines a fighting chance against air attack until follow-on forces arrive to take over the job.

The Future: Texas Instruments (TI)/Martin Javelin

Javelin represents a new generation of precision-guided fire-and-forget antitank weapons. The joint Army/Marine Corps program, now in production, began in 1989 under the acronym AAWS-M (Advanced Anti-tank Weapon System — Medium). The Marines will receive a small initial batch (140 missiles) in 1997, and expect to field a full operational capability in the heavy weapons platoon of the rifle company and the heavy weapons company of the battalion by 1999. The joint Army/Marine requirement is 31,269 missiles and 3,541 Command Launch Units through the year 2004, but in the absence of a war, procurement targets rarely survive successive rounds of budget cuts.

At first glance, what Javelin does seems impossible. "Precision guidance" usually requires a human being in the loop to control the flight of the weapon up to the moment of impact. A good example is the Marines' current portable anti-tank missile, the hated McDonnell Douglas M-47 Dragon, which entered service in the early 1970s. The Dragon gunner, crouched in a awkward and uncomfortable position, must keep the target centered in his telescopic sight during the missile's entire time of flight, as long as twelve seconds out to 1,000 m/1,094 yd. Steering commands travel down twin steel wires that uncoil from bobbins on the missile and the launch tube. If the enemy detects the smoke and flash of the missile launch, he will quickly fire back in the general direction with everything he's got. If the Dragon gunner ducks, or even flinches, the missile will probably fly into the ground or pass harmlessly over the target.

Javelin does things differently. Because it uses an intelligent imaging-infrared seeker, the new missile combines precision guidance with fire-and-forget operation. In effect, the missile software "remembers" the thermal signature of the target it locked onto when it was launched. It also "knows" how to follow a moving target, and how to perform tricky maneuvers during its last few milliseconds of "life." The missile performs a climb and dive to strike the top of the target, where the armor is thinnest. If the target is inside a building, or under some kind of top-cover, the gunner can select a direct flight path.

The Javelin system has two components: the missile round in a disposable launch tube, and the reusable 14-lb/6.4-kg Command Launch Unit (CLU), which looks rather like a big box camera with trigger-grip handles. The CLU snaps into a connector on the launch tube, and the gunner hoists the entire 49-lb/22.4-kg weapon up onto either shoulder, activates the replaceable battery (which powers the system for up to four hours), and looks through the eyepiece. In daylight, this functions as a four-power telescopic sight; and at night, or in blowing sand, smoke, fog, or other obscured conditions, it functions as a Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) viewer, presenting a green-and-black thermal image of the battlefield, with a 4-power wide field of view or a 9-power narrow field.

Javelin can be fired safely inside an enclosure, since there is no back-blast per se. A small kick motor, which burns for only a 1/10 of a second, ejects the missile from the launch tube to a safe distance before the main rocket motor ignites. Maximum range is over 2,000 m/1.25 mi. Javelin uses a "tandem warhead" to defeat spaced armor or explosive-reactive protection systems. A small shaped charge detonates first to strip away any outer layers; then, microseconds later, the main shaped charge detonates to penetrate and destroy the target. It is effective and deadly, as well as being the first of a new generation of "brilliant" guided weapons to enter U.S. service. So excited is the Marine Corps about this system that even before it is fielded, the Corps is thinking about using it as the primary anti-armor system on the new AAAV amphibious tractor. Keep your eye on this one, folks. It's going to be a winner!

The Future: Lockheed Marine Loral Aeronutronic Predator

For all of its shortcomings, the Marines generally miss the old M72 LAW. Light and compact, it gave them the ability to hit and destroy, albeit at short ranges, almost anything short of a heavy tank. In addition, it could be (and was) carried by every Marine in a rifle squad, meaning that a unit had a bunch of them to use in combat. Unfortunately, by the late 1970s the LAW was going out of service and was being replaced by heavier and more specialized systems like the AT-4. Nevertheless, the Marines have always wanted another "wooden round" heavy weapon like LAW, and they began a program to give them a 21st century version. Originally known as SRAW (Short-Range Assault Weapon), Predator has been under development since the 1980s, and will enter service around the year 2000. Weighing only 19 1b/8.6 kg, and measuring 35 in./89 cm in length, the missile and its disposable launch tube will be issued like a round of ammunition that any rifleman can carry and fire. Like Javelin, Predator has a "soft launch" motor that allows it to be fired safely from inside an enclosure.

System costs are kept low (about $5,000.00 per unit in FY-96) by dispensing with costly precision guidance and thermal-imaging components. For the required maximum range of 600 m/1,970 ft, it is sufficient to have a few microchips and mechanical components that function as an "inertial autopilot." Against a stationary target, this automatically compensates for crosswinds, uneven terrain, and variations in thrust as the rocket motor burns out. Against a moving target (up to speeds of 22 mph/35.4 kph), the missile's autopilot senses the slew (crossing) rate as the gunner tracks the target for about a second before launch, and then automatically computes the correct lead angle for target intercept. All the gunner has to do is keep the crosshairs of the 2.5 power telescopic sight on the center of the target and pull the trigger. The Predator does the rest.

In its nose Predator carries a highly sensitive "target detection device" that combines a tiny range-finding laser, angled downward and forward to sense the edge of the target, and a magnetometer that senses the mass of the target. When the software concludes that the missile is directly over the target, it detonates the 5-lb/2.25-kg warhead, which projects an explosively formed heavy metal penetrator (like that of the TOW-2B) at almost Mach 5 down through the thin roof of the target. In tests on old M-48 tanks, the projectile even continued downward to blow a hole through the hull floor! Loral has also proposed a "direct attack" version for the Army, with a simple, massive high-explosive or incendiary warhead. Minimum range, determined mainly by the safe arming distance for the warhead, is only 56 ft/17 m, making this an ideal weapon for ambushes in urban or wooded terrain. Maximum velocity of the missile is 984 fps/300 m/s, and the time of flight to 500 m/1,640 ft is only 2.25 seconds. While its size and weight will probably mean that only one Predator per Marine will be carried, it will give a rifle squad back its lethal-ity against armor and other heavy targets. In addition, the growth potential of Predator, as well as the Javelin system, means that these systems will be in service well into the 21 st century.

The Marine Corps today has a small but vital force of armor, which is designed to provide support to the rifle units that are at the core of its being. It is a force focused on supporting Marines in the field and helping them accomplish their missions. Amphibious tractors are used to deliver troops to the shore under armor. The wheeled force of Light Armored Vehicles (LAVs) is used to provide screening and reconnaissance, as well as an under-armor anti-tank system. And the small force of main battle tanks (MBTs) provides a hard edge to the rest of the force, both in offensive and defensive operations. All of these vehicles are part of the TO&E of the Corps because they are needed on a modern battlefield, not because they are easy to support and move around. That perhaps is why the Corps is asking the question about whether or not MBTs and other armored vehicles will actually be needed in the future. This question is part of the ongoing Sea Dragon project at the Commandant's Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Virginia, and will be under study for some time to come. Meanwhile, armored vehicles will remain part of the Corps.

General Dynamics M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank

The Marines acquired their first tanks during World War II as hand-me-downs from the U.S. Army. Though tanks have seen action with the Corps in virtually all of their combat actions since that time, they never have been the center of the Marine combat force. Always used to support rifle units, they have mostly been deployed in small units like platoons or companies. From the 1960s to the Gulf Crisis in 1990, the armored fist of the Marine Corps was based around the M48 and M60-series Patton tanks. These were the last U.S. MBTs that utilized cast-hull-and-turret construction, and served with honor for almost three decades. But by 1990, they were badly dated in terms of mobility, firepower, and protection. This is not to say that they were not a welcome addition to the forces that served in the Persian Gulf. On the contrary, when the M60 tanks of the First Marine Expeditionary Force's (I MEF) 3rd Tank Battalion rolled off of the ships of Maritime Preposition Squadron Three (MPSRON 3), they represented the first heavy armor to arrive in support of Operation Desert Shield (in August 1990). Equipped with reactive armor, they held the line until the M1A1 Abrams MBTs of then-Major General Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mechanized Infantry Division arrived in September.

While other Army armored units arrived in the fall of 1990, the Marines continued to use their elderly M60s. Still, the limitations of the old Pattons were not lost on the leadership at Central Command (CENTCOM) headquarters. For this reason, the British 7th Armored Brigade (the "Desert Rats"), and later the 2nd Armored Division's "Tiger" Brigade, augmented I MEF with their more modern tanks and armored fighting vehicles. As the run-up to Desert Storm started, the leadership of the Marine Corps decided to do something about the shortcomings of the MBT force, and decided to request an early introduction of the M1A1 Abrams into service.

The story of the M1A1 coming into service with the Marines started in the late 1980s, when they ran compatibility trials with the Abrams. Marine Corps requirements had not really been considered when the Ml was being designed and developed by the Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) in Warren, Michigan. In fact, the Marines have usually had very little to say when it came to the design of MBTs, and the M 1 was no exception. This is not to say that the M 1 was in no way compatible with Marine requirements. It was. But the Abrams was developed to be transported in the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster heavy transport aircraft, without any particular eye to future use in the Corps. By the late 1980s, though, the obsolescence of the M60 was obvious to the Corps leadership, and moves were begun to bring the Abrams into Marine service.

The major additions and changes to accommodate the Marine mission involved the addition of a fording kit, which provided the M1's gas turbine engine with a steady supply of water-free air. This involved the addition of several tall stacks that are installed whenever the Abrams is involved in crossing streams or other water hazards, or emerging in the surf-line from a landing craft. Plans went forth to begin procurement of a small force (about four hundred) of the Mls to upgrade the Marine MBT force in the early 1990s. The 1990 crisis in the Persian Gulf short-circuited these plans. When it became clear in November that an offensive to evict Iraq from occupied Kuwait would be required, and not wanting his Marines to fight in obsolete MBTs, General Al Gray (the Commandant at the time) requested that TACOM send the Marines in the Gulf an allotment of M1A1 MBTs to flesh out one tank battalion (the 2nd) of I MEF. The 2nd Tank Battalion fought their way through the flaming hell of the Kuwaiti oilfields in February of 1991. Since that time, every tank battalion in the Marine Corps has received the M1. Meanwhile, the Marines procured enough extra tanks to flesh out the embarked tank battalions aboard the ships of the three MPSRONs stationed around the world. The last of these did not come easily, since they were diverted from U.S. Army stocks of the tank. The Army's position was that they needed all of the big iron beasts that they could get, though the diversion of several hundred to meet the needs of the Marines seems a small inconvenience for the Army. In any case, the money for the Marine Abrams program went right back into producing new state-of-the-art M 1A2s, which are much more advanced than the A1 models handed over to the Corps.

The M1A1 model lacks the advanced digital data links and electronics of the later M1A2s, but it has the same heavy depleted uranium armor, special M829 "silver bullet" ammunition, and engines as its more modern brethren in Army service. For the Marines, this is hardly a problem, since they tend to use their tanks in four-tank platoons, and are not in need of the extra command-and-control systems designed into the M 1A2. This is not to say that they may not desire to have some of the more modern versions later on. They might. The new AAAV is planned to have the same kinds of interconnects into the so-called "digital battlefield" planned for the 21st century, so don't be surprised if the Marines don't have General Dynamics Land Systems remanufacture their M1A1s into A2s sometime down the road.

One of the more interesting M1A1 developments has been the first deployment of M1s with the 26th MEU (SOC) in August 1995. This is the first tank deployment with an afloat amphibious unit in almost five years, and represents a new acceptance of the MBT by those who practice amphibious operations. The unit's commander, Colonel Jim Battaglini (whom we will meet later), wanted the edge that a platoon of four M1A1s might give his unit, especially if they were required to operate in the Balkans. This request was based on a careful evaluation of the Abrams's different assets and detriments. On the plus side was the incredible armor, firepower, and mobility that four such vehicles would give him. With its highly accurate and powerful 120mm smoothbore gun, the four tanks would have more gun firepower than a pair of Aegis cruisers with their twin 5-in./127mm guns. After the incredible reduction in supporting firepower that has occurred over the last five years, this is an important reason for taking the 67-ton steel monsters along. The downside of this has to do with the weight issue. That is, each one of the M1A1s weighs so much that a Landing Craft, Air Cushioned (LCAC) can carry only one M1, while a conventional Landing Craft, Utility (LCU) can carry two. Furthermore, both types of landing craft are limited to delivering them in fairly calm seas and surfs. Finally, the M1A1 has a big logistics tail, requiring regular refueling (it gets about 1 mi/1.6 km for every two gallons/7.6 liters of diesel fuel/JP-8 burned), lots of spare parts, and an M88 recovery vehicle. All this is a significant addition to the load carried by an amphibious ready group. Despite the problems, Colonel Battaglini felt the gains were worth the price, and the first deployment with the tanks has been completed successfully. There will be more to follow. For now, though, plan on seeing the M1A1 in Marine service well into the 21st century.

Light Armored Vehicle (LAV)

Back in the late 1970s, the Marine Corps began to be concerned about its lack of a good, general-purpose armored reconnaissance and personnel carrier. What was required was something smaller, faster, and more agile than an MBT like the M60 or a large personnel carrier like the LVTP-7/AAV-7. Traditionally, the Marines have lacked the kind of armored cavalry units that the Army considers essential to its operations, and the coming of large Warsaw Pact armored forces in the late 1970s worried the Corps leadership. They feared that without an armored reconnaissance and screening force, MAGTFs might be overrun before they could be made ready to repel an armored assault. It was in this context that the Marines began a program to build a family of light armored vehicles to support their operations. The requirement was rigorous, because it specified that the winning design would have to be both armored and capable of dishing out enough firepower to kill an enemy armored personnel or reconnaissance vehicle. In addition, it had to be capable of being lifted by transport aircraft as small as a C-130 Hercules, or carried as a swing load by the new CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter. This meant that the new LAV could weigh no more than sixteen tons, and this almost guaranteed that it would have to be wheeled instead of tracked. Thus, the new vehicle would have to be an unusual kind of armored fighting vehicle these days, an armored car. What sets armored cars apart is that they carry fair armor and weapons, but on a chassis only half the weight of a tracked vehicle. In addition, they are very fast on roads and good terrain, though somewhat less so in poor terrain and driving conditions (snow, mud, etc.). Dating back to World War I, they have been used by reconnaissance and screening forces with great success.

A total of eight contractors submitted bids on the LAV contract, with the winner being declared in 1982. The winning team was composed of Detroit Diesel, General Motors (DDGM) of Canada — which supplied the chassis, and Delco Electronics (part of Hughes/GM) — which built and integrated the weapons turrets. The vehicle itself was based on the Swiss Piranha (designed by MOWAG), a diesel-powered, eight-wheeled vehicle which would carry an M242 25mm Bushmaster cannon and an M240G 7.62mm machine gun in the turret. Fast and agile, it would also be capable of carrying six Marines in the rear compartment, thus allowing it to act as a small armored personnel carrier. While it would not be as capable or as sophisticated as the new M2/3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) that was also just coming into service, it would do its job for about half the cost ($900,000.00 at the time). In addition, it would be far more deployable and mobile across a variety of conditions than the Bradley. Because the LAV was based upon an off-the-shelf design, procurement was fast and the first units were in service by the mid-1980s.

So successful was the initial version that a number of variants were procured. All of them were based upon the same basic DDGM chassis, and generally have a driver and commander, as well as gunners and other crew as required by their respective roles. The driver is located in the left front of the vehicle, where he (USMC armor personnel are currently male) steers with a conventional steering wheel. Other controls (accelerator, brakes, etc.) are also fairly conventional, and the LAV family drives very well. All versions of the LAV are armed with a single M240G 7.62mm machine gun (with two hundred ready rounds and eight hundred additional stowed) on a pintle mount and eight smoke grenade launchers (with eight ready grenades and eight stowed), and are fully amphibious (with only three minutes preparation) for crossing rivers, lakes, and other water obstacles. The LAV family is driven by a 275-hp General Motors diesel engine with all eight wheels being powered (8X8). Thus, even across broken or steep terrain, the LAV is a very quick vehicle. Speeds of up to 62 mph/99.8 kph on hard-surface roads are possible, while the LAV can swim a calm body of water at 6 mph/9.6 kph. Armor protection might be described as "basic," which means that while it can stop shell fragments and fire from heavy machine guns and light cannons, it will probably not survive a hit from an anti-tank missile or an MBT gun. On the other hand, the LAV's high mobility and maneuverability make it capable of running away from everything but an attack helicopter or aircraft.

There are many versions of the LAV; they include the following:

• LAV-25—This is the baseline version of the LAV, which is equipped with the M242 25mm Bushmaster cannon and a M240G 7.62mm machine gun. An additional light machine gun can be mounted on a pintle mount. The two-man (commander and gunner) turret has 210 ready rounds—150 high-explosive (HE), 60 armor-piercing (AP) — of 25mm ammunition, as well as stowage for 420 more in the rear compartment if troops are not carried. There are 400 and 1,200 rounds of 25mm and 7.62mm ammunition respectively. The weapons are sighted through an optical sight with a light-image intensifier for night operations, though no FLIR system is yet carried. The turret is powered by an electrically pumped hydraulic system, which is fully stabilized so that it can fire on the move. A total of 401 LAV-25s are in service with the Marine Corps.

• LAV-AT— The LAV-AT (for Anti-Tank) uses the same chassis as the LAV-25, and is equipped with a two-man "hammerhead" mount for a twin Hughes Tube-launched, Optically sighted, Wire-guided (TOW) missile launcher in place of the 25mm cannon turret. In addition, a M240G pintle-mounted machine gun with four hundred 7.62mm rounds is carried. Thanks to the erectable "hammerhead" design, the LAV-AT can hide behind a hill or rise and still sight and fire its missiles. A pair of missiles are stored as ready rounds in the launcher, with room for fourteen more in the ammo compartment. A total of ninety-five LAV-ATs are in service with the Marines.

• LAV-AD—The newest version of the LAV is the LAV-AD (for Air Defense). The weapons station is armed with two four-round packs of Stinger SAMs as well as a 25mm GAU-12 three-barreled Gatling gun. Equipped with a FLIR targeting sensor and a digital data link for queuing, it is a significant improvement over the existing Avenger system which is based on an HMMWV. Currently, seventeen are being procured by the Marines, with additional procurement likely.

• LAV–C2—Every unit needs secure positions where commanders can receive reports and issue orders. Unfortunately, fixed command posts rarely last long in combat, because either they fall too far behind an advancing force, or they are quickly destroyed by enemy artillery or air strikes when their positions are determined by radio-direction-finding equipment. Thus, the armored mobile command post. To give this capability to LAV units, the Marines have purchased a force of fifty command variants. In the LAV–C2, the weapons turrets are deleted, the crew and ammo compartments are made into a single space and equipped with a shelter tent extension for the rear of the vehicle, and there is a battery of radio gear. This includes four VHF sets, a combined UHF/VHF unit, a UHF position-location reporting set, one HF radio, and a single portable VHF set.

• LAV–L—Armored units need a lot of supplies in order to accomplish their crucial jobs. Since logistics vehicles of LAV units come under the same kinds of fire as the combat vehicles, they need to be armored as well. For this reason, 94 LAV–L logistics versions were purchased. Based upon the LAV–C, the LAV–L is basically an open compartment for carrying supplies; and it is equipped with a 1,100-1b/500-kg manually powered crane for lifting heavy items like pallets and engines.

• LAV-M—One of the shortcomings of Marine armored units is that they have no organic armored artillery units like the Army's M 109A6 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzer. However, the Marines have developed and deployed fifty armored mortar carriers, based on the LAV. Called the LAV-M, it is equipped with an M252 81mm mortar and carries ninety-nine (five ready, ninety-four stowed) 81mm projectiles. Using the same open-compartment chassis as the LAV–L and C variants, it has a hatch over the rear compartment for the mortar to fire through. The LAV-M also carries a baseplate and bipod for operating the M252 dismounted.

• LAV-R-Nearly every family of armored vehicles breeds a recovery version, which can be used to haul broken or damaged vehicles to the rear for repair, and the LAV is no exception. The Marines have acquired forty-five of this type, designated LAV-R. Each LAV-R is equipped with a 9,000-1b/4,086-kg boom crane, a 30,000-lb/ 13,620-kg winch, a battery of floodlights, an electric welder, a 120/230-volt generator, and a 10-kw hydraulic generator. The crew consists of a driver, commander, and rigger who is cross-trained in welding and other maintenance/repair skills.

Other versions are currently in development, including an electronic-warfare (EW) version that has an array of direction-finding, intercept, and jamming equipment packed onboard. Watch for this LAV-EW version to appear before the turn of the century in USMC service. Other countries using versions of the LAV include Australia, Canada, and Saudi Arabia.

In combat, the LAV has acquired a reputation for reliability and effectiveness, in spite of its light armor and lack of a FLIR thermal sight system. During Desert Storm, LAVs acted as the armored cavalry for the units of I MEF, fixing and finding Iraqi units from the Battle of Al Kafji to the final liberation of Kuwait City. Tragically, the bulk of the LAV losses occurred from friendly fire: One LAV-25 was mistakenly destroyed by a TOW missile from an LAV-AT; and an errant AGM-65 Maverick missile from an Air Force A-10A killed another.

United Defense LVTP-7/AAV-7A1 (Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel)

There is no more traditional Marine mission than to land on a beach and then storm inland to an objective. Doing this mission right calls for an extremely specialized kind of vehicle — the amphibious tractor. The amphibious tractor is a strange hybrid mixture of landing craft and armored personnel carrier, a seemingly impossible mix if you think about it. The first requirement for an amphibious landing craft is that it be a seaworthy boat. It needs to handle well in rough seas, and to be able to come ashore in plunging ocean surf — up to 10 ft/3 m high — without swamping or getting stuck. On top of that, the armored personnel carrier must have good cross-country mobility, all-around firepower, and protection for the crew, at least from small-arms fire and shell fragments. All of those requirements make for a design problem with daunting contradictions. Consider the following. You need to design a machine that can deliver a platoon of twenty-five Marines from a landing ship some miles offshore to a hostile beach, making at least 8 mph/13.5 kph. Then, the machine has to be able to crawl inland at 40 mph/64 kph. And it has to have both protection and firepower. The resulting design was neither subtle nor pretty. But it was a great improvement over previous Marine amphibious tracked vehicles.

The Marines call it an "amtrac" (amphibious tractor), and it's the product of an evolution that began way back in the 1930s in Clearwater, Florida. Donald Roebling was an eccentric millionaire, the grandson of Washington Roebling, the visionary engineer who designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. One of Roebling's pet projects was the "Alligator," an amphibious crawler designed to rescue hurricane survivors or downed aviators in the cypress swamps of the Everglades. Engineers at the nearby Food Machinery Company (FMC, which built orange juice canning equipment) helped him fabricate parts for the contraption in their spare time. In 1938, the Marines sent an officer to request a demonstration, but Roebling wasn't interested. Then came Pearl Harbor. And Roebling changed his mind. Even so, he maintained his quirky integrity: He refused to accept any royalties from the Government for his design patent, and when he discovered that the cost of building the first military prototype, the LVT-1, was $4,000 less than the Navy Department had allocated, he insisted on submitting a refund!

By the end of the war FMC (now the managing partners of United Defense) had built over eleven thousand LVT "Water Buffaloes" in dozens of different types and modifications. They first saw action with the Marines at Guadalcanal in 1942 as cargo carriers, but their moment of glory came in the invasion of Tarawa in November 1943. Planners had miscalculated the tides and underestimated the difficulty of crossing the jagged coral reefs that encircled the tiny atoll. But the amtracs waddled ashore while the normal landing craft were stranded and shot to pieces, thus saving the day and the invasion. The Marines eventually organized a dozen amtrac battalions in the Pacific, and the U.S. Army even formed a few in Europe (these spearheaded the assault crossing of the flooded Rhine in the spring of 1945). Later, in the Korean War, amtracs played a key role in the Inchon landing.

When Marines were deployed in force to Vietnam in 1964, the standard amtrac was the LVTP-5, a forty-ton steel monster that carried thirty-seven men, with a ramp door at the bow and a gasoline engine in the rear. It was a good landing craft, but impractical for the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia. The fuel tanks were located under the floor, which made the vehicle a death trap if it struck a mine. As a result, Marines generally preferred to ride on top, and contemporary photographs often show LVTP-5s decorated with improvised forts on their roofs made of sandbags and chain-link fence.

Even before our direct involvement in Vietnam, the shortcomings of the LVTP-5 were well known, and plans were afoot to make good its shortcomings. In 1963, the Marine Corps asked industry to develop a smaller, less costly amtrac with better cross-country performance. FMC's first LVTPX-12 prototype was finished in 1967; and with minor modifications, it entered production in 1971 as the LVTP-7. Production eventually ended in 1983 when an improved version, designated the LVTP-7A1 (also known as the Amphibious Assault Vehicle Seven — AAV-7A1), came into service. A total of 995 of the original vehicles have been rebuilt to the AAV-7A1 standard, joining 403 new production units. LVTP-7s also serve with the naval infantry of Argentina, Brazil, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, and Venezuela.

The AAV-7 is a huge box of welded aluminum alloy, slightly pointy at one end, 26 ft/7.9 m long, 10 ft, 9 in./3.3 m wide, and 10 ft, 3 in./3.1 m high at the deck. Its EAAK armored version weighs 46,314 lb/21,052 kg empty. There is a lumpy weapons station/turret to starboard and smaller lumps for the platoon sergeant's and driver's hatches to port. Marines enter or exit through an enormous hydraulic-powered ramp at the stern, or through a small hinged door in the ramp itself. The accommodations inside can only be described as "austere," with a row of seats along each wall and a removable bench in the middle. The 400-hp Cummins diesel engine is mounted in the right front, where the massive engine block provides some measure of protection to the crew compartment behind it. The Marines who ride it like to complain about the ventilation system, which seems to suck the exhaust fumes directly into the crew compartment. Diesel fumes may smell awful, but diesel fuel is much less explosive than gasoline if your vehicle is hit. The same basic engine is used in the Army's M2/3 Bradley armored infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). The tracks on each side run over six road wheels, each with a torsion-bar suspension system. In the water, the vehicle is propelled by twin jet-pumps which draw water from above each track and spew it out at a rate of 14,000 gallons/53,000 liters per minute. Steering deflectors on the jet pumps allow the vehicle to turn completely around in its own length.

It was originally intended that the powered one-man turret would carry a German-designed 20mm automatic cannon and a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. But this proved impractical and the production turret carried the classic and reliable M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun, with a simple reticle gunsight. A thousand rounds of belted ammunition are stowed in two-hundred-round cans which can be reloaded internally. The improved turret of the LVTP-7A1 is powered by an electric motor rather than a hydraulic drive, and supplements the M2 machine gun with a stubby 40mm Mk. 19 automatic grenade launcher with ninety-six belted rounds as the basic load. Eight externally mounted smoke-grenade launchers can deploy a dense white obscuring cloud over a wide arc in a matter of seconds. A switch on the driver's panel can also be activated to dump raw fuel into the engine exhaust manifold, which generates dark obscuring smoke, at the cost of very high fuel consumption.

On land, the AAV-7 can reach a maximum speed of 45 mph/72 kph. It can climb a 3-ft/.9-m vertical obstacle or cross a trench 8 ft/2.4 m wide. In addition, it can climb an astonishing 60 % grade and negotiate a 40 % slide-slope without tipping over. At 25 mph/40 kph, the maximum endurance is 300 mi/483 km. The driver has an AN/VVS-2 night-vision device, an electro-optical image intensifier, or "starlight scope," that amplifies even the weakest light. On water, the maximum speed is rated as 8 mph/13 kph, but this assumes a calm sea. The AAV-7 is not, however, limited to placid waters; it can operate in higher sea and surf conditions than any other landing craft used in the world's amphibious forces. Theoretically, the AAV-7 can cruise for up to seven hours at 6 mph/9.6 kph, but Marine doctrine, based on considerations of fatigue, control, and navigation, prescribes a run-in to the beach of no more than an hour. An efficient bilge pump serves to keep the crew compartment dry, even in rough seas. Standard navigation equipment is limited to a crude magnetic compass, but today many vehicles have a GPS receiver added to their equipment fit.

In an assault from the sea, Marine platoons will typically embark on their AAV-7s inside the docking well of amphibious transport such as an LPD, LHD, or LSD. The transport will then flood its ballast tanks and open the stern gate, creating a gentle incline for the amtracs to crawl down into the water. They then turn on their water jets and head for the beach. The goal of the amtrac unit is to deliver its passengers safely as close as possible to the objective, where they will dismount and secure the area. The amtracs might then return to their mother ship to pick up a second wave of Marines, or a load of supplies — up to five tons of food, ammunition, and equipment. Note that the amtrac with its driver and gunner "belong" to an amphibious tractor battalion, while the passengers will generally be an embarked Marine infantry platoon belonging to a rifle company. During Desert Storm, most Marine platoons stayed with the same amtrac for the four days of the ground war, using them just like conventional armored personnel carriers.

On dry land, the AAV-7 has severe tactical shortcomings, mostly because of its large size and limited armor protection (in Kuwait, the amtracs were supported by LAVs and main battle tanks). By itself, the AAV-7 is terribly vulnerable to enemy anti-armor weapons, since its thin aluminum armor was designed only to keep out small-arms fire and shell fragments. A bolt-on Enhanced Applique Armor Kit (EAAK) has been developed, which adds several thousand pounds of weight, but defeats the Soviet KPV 14.5mm armor-piercing machine gun, which is carried by many threat helicopters, light armored vehicles, and heavy weapon teams. One of the greatest threats to the crew of an armored vehicle is fire resulting from the penetration of a rocket-propelled grenade or anti-tank guided weapon. The amtrac now carries an automatic fire-suppression system, which combines super-fast-acting infrared sensors with quick-discharge bottles of Halon, an inert gas that snuffs out the fire before the fire can snuff out the crew. In practice, combat vehicles usually spend much of their time in battle with the engine idling, to keep the batteries charged and the radio operating while they wait for orders. The standard vehicle has three secure voice radios; but a special command version has six VHF, one UHF, and one HF set, plus a ten-station intercom system. Very soon, it will be fitted with the new SINCGARS-series radios, which will greatly improve the range and quality of communications for the big craft. As currently planned, the fleet of AAV-7s will have to serve about another fifteen years until the arrival of the new Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle, which is currently under development. Until roughly 2006, they will have to hold the line, and continue doing their uncomfortable, dangerous job.

The Future: The Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV)

A quiet little program run out of an office building in Arlington, Virginia, will provide a replacement for the long-serving AAV-7s. The Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV) is going to be the world's most advanced armored fighting vehicle, with capabilities previously undreamed of by Marines, or by soldiers of any nation. Our story begins back in the late 1970s when the Marines began to reevaluate their doctrine for forced entry amphibious operations. Ever since "Brute" Krulak took the first unit of amphibious tractors out on their evaluation trials, higher speed through the water has been a desired goal. There even was a stillborn program, the Landing Vehicle Assault (LVA) back in the 1970s, that was designed to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, the technology to achieve the lofty requirements of the LVA specification simply was not there, and the program was terminated in 1979.

Now, you did not need to have a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering back then to figure out that the nature of naval warfare was changing. These changes, though, did not invalidate the high-speed amphibious tractor requirement. On the contrary, it was being rapidly confirmed by current events. One look at any one of a dozen trade publications would have shown you the variety of weapons and systems being developed to attack surface vessels from ships, subs, planes, and shore bases. In short, the closer an amphibious task force approached an enemy shore, the more dangerous it was getting. Take, for example, the British experience in the Falklands War of 1982: In less than a month of amphibious and support operations, the Royal Navy lost two destroyers, two frigates, a pair of landing ships, and a container ship to Argentine air and missile attacks. Several times this number were damaged. The lessons were made clear for the whole world to see: Put yourself within visual range of a hostile shore, and you'll get shot with weapons that will likely hit you and hurt you.

If the Falklands experience was bad, everyone who dealt with such matters knew that the future was going to be worse. They knew that within a few years, you would need to stand away from an enemy shore and deliver your forces from a long distance if your large amphibious forces were to survive. Thus, the Marines and Navy began to develop new ships and delivery systems that would allow a greater standoff from the shoreline during amphibious operations. The Marines' part in this revolution in amphibious warfare doctrine is centered around three systems. The first of these was the LCAC, which allowed the amphibs to stand over 50 nm/91 km from the shoreline. Following the LCAC will be the MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft, which is designed to replace the CH-46E Sea Knight. With greater speed, range, and payload (by roughly 300 %) than the Sea Knight, it allows a ship like the Wasp (LHD-1) to stand over 200 nm/366 km offshore and still put its cargo ashore in about an hour. The final system designed to exploit standoff from the beach will be the AAAV.

The AAAV is designed to move at speeds over 25 kn/45 kph, so that the ship that launches it can stand over the visual horizon from the beach. And that's very good. But more important, the AAAV is going to be the finest armored IFV ever built, better even than the Army's M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicle. This is a tall claim for a system that has just had its prime contractor (General Dynamics, Land Systems) selected, but you have to understand the Marine Corps' approach to a design problem like this one to appreciate why. To repeat something I've said before: The technology base of the Marines is very narrow and specifically tailored to the missions of the Corps. Well, the technology elements of the AAAV fall into just that category, which means that the Corps has invested much of its hard-fought research and development (R&D) budget in the AAAV effort. Now, you might ask what it takes to give a high-performance IFV the characteristics of a high-speed powerboat. Well, the following is a list of some of the systems that had to be developed to make the AAAV possible:

• High-Speed Hull—Over a series of fifteen years, a series of high-speed-planing-hull designs has been developed to test the feasibility of the AAAV concept. Through the use of three subscale test models (built by AAI Corporation), a basic design utilizing a retractable bow flap, which acts like a surfboard, has been settled upon as the basis for the AAAV design. Called "Skimming Bricks," they are providing a solid database of experience with which to develop the AAAV hull.

• Dual Mode Propulsion System—The AAAV will be equipped with an incredible 2,600-hp MTU/Detroit Diesel turbocharged diesel engine. Sealed as a self-contained power unit, it will last up to nine years, and only require an oil change every two years! Working through an automatic transmission, it will drive a pair of powerful 23-in./60-cm-diameter water jets, which will drive it through the water at speed approaching 43 mph/70.5 kph in calm seastates. The propulsion system is so powerful that the twin sets of impeller blades will puree a four-inch-by-four-inch log without a blink. Once it approaches to within a few hundred yards/meters of the beach, the track system will take over, still pushing the AAAV through the surf at around 8 mph/13 kph. Once on dry land, the AAAV will have better mobility than an M 1 Abrams tank, while only using about 800 hp from the engine.

• Retractable Track System—If the AAAV is to obtain high speeds through the water, the track system must be shrouded from the water flow under the vehicle. To this end, the AAAV's track system retracts into the vehicle, and is dropped when it approaches the beach. All of this takes place in just under twenty seconds. Once on dry land, it utilizes the same kind of hydropneumatic suspension system as the M1, which will give it excellent mobility.

• Armor Protection System—The armor-protection system of the AAAV will likely take advantage of the advanced composite armor development being done by United Defense. This will allow the relatively large (27 ft/8.2 m long, 12 ft/3.7 m wide, and 10 ft/3 m tall) AAAV to weigh in at only thirty to thirty-six tons, yet still have better protection than the M2/3A3 variant of the Bradley IFV. In addition, there appears to be some effort to reduce the acoustic, infrared, visual, and possibly even radar signatures of the AAAV.

• Vehicle Electronics System—Like the M1A2 Abrams and M2/3A3 Bradley, the AAAV will be equipped to operate on the planned digital battlefield of the 21st century. This will include second-generation FLIR viewer systems for the driver and gunner/commander. In addition, the AAAV will be equipped with the same kind of vehicle electronics as the M1A2 and MZ/3A3, including a digital data bus with onboard diagnostics, GPS tied to a moving map display, a combat identification system to avoid fratricide, and a digital data link fed through three of the new SINCGARS jam-resistant radios. All of this will be controlled by a vehicle software package that will be composed of between 300,000 and 500,000 lines of Ada code, over a Mil. STD-1553 data bus. The driver will even control the throttle, steering, and brakes through a computer, what the Marines call a "drive-by-wire" system!

• Armament Package — While this particular item is still being decided upon, current planning has the AAAV equipped with an M242 25mm Bushmaster cannon and a 7.62mm machine gun, like those on the M2/3 Bradley and the LAV-25. There had been plans to perhaps arm the new amtrac with a special 35mm cannon firing time-fused ammunition, but this will probably not happen. But it may carry a twin launcher for the new fire-and-forget Javelin anti-armor missile, if all goes well. All of the AAAV's armament will be usable both in the water and on dry land, and is designed to provide it with the firepower to survive and overmatch other armored vehicles on the battlefield.

• Payload/Range—Each AAAV will be capable of transporting a thirteen-man rifle squad and a heavy weapons team — about eighteen personnel plus the three-man crew. Given this load, the AAAV will be capable of swimming up to 65 nm/120 km, or traveling up to 300 mi/483 km on dry land. A normal mission configuration would have the vehicle swimming in from about 25 nm/46 km offshore, moving about 100 mi/161 km to and from the objective, and then swimming back to the mother ship. The minimum high water speed will be 25 mph/40.2 kph, and maximum 43 mph/69.2 km. All of this in seas up to 10 ft/3 m. In the event an AAAV is overturned, it is capable of righting itself automatically in up to Seastate 5.

• Production Variants—Current USMC plans call for a total of 1,013 AAAVs to be produced by 2012, the planned termination date of the contract. Of these, there will be 948 transport versions, and 75 configured as mobile command posts. Planned IOC will be in 2006, and the 1,013 AAAVs will replace a force of 1,323 LVTP-7/AAV-7 amtracs. There will not be a recovery version, since it is planned that other chassis (the M88 carried for the M1A1s) can do double duty for this job. Unit cost has yet to be fixed, but will likely be between $2 and $4 million a copy (comparable to the cost of a new M1A2 MBT). Hard work is being done to drive this cost down.

It is likely that the AAAV will be the last armored vehicle procured by the Marine Corps in the foreseeable future. It therefore must be able to survive and dominate its chosen battlespace for most of the first half of the 21st century. It is an ambitious program, though all of the technologies are well proven and understood by all of those involved.

While Marine units are anything but "heavy" where vehicles are concerned, they still require their share of trucks and other transportation assets to keep themselves supplied and mobile. For this reason, the Corps has carefully selected a few varieties of transport vehicles to support their expeditionary units, and is generally quite happy with them. A proper complement of transport vehicles is vital for a unit like a MEU (SOC), since there is only so much room aboard its amphibious ships to stow its gear. In fact, while you will find about thirty armored vehicles in such a unit, it will have over one hundred trucks of different types, including those mounting machine guns, mortars, and missiles. Here are the most important of these:

AM General M998 High-Mobility Medium Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV)

The vast majority of vehicles in the Army and Marine Corps today derive from the classic M998 High-Mobility Medium Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). Like the Army, the Corps has embraced the "Hummer," and it has performed nobly in a vast variety of tasks. Produced for over a decade by AM General of South Bend, Indiana, the HMMWV is used for everything from ambulance duty to air defense. Powered by a diesel V-8 engine, it is practically indestructible and can climb anything that a member of any military force in the world might want to take and hold. Today, the Marine Corps' buy of Hummers is pretty much complete, though there will probably be additional buys in the 21st Century as older models wear out. As it is, the M998s that the Marines use are being heavily used, and will probably require a mid-life service life-extension program (SLEP) sometime in the next ten years or so. In the short term, if a Marine offers you a ride, expect it to be in an HMMWV

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.

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 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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Even better things were to follow. With the Sea Harrier, the Royal Navy had already demonstrated that it was possible to fit a radar in the Harrier's nose. With the Harrier II Plus, McDonnell Douglas engineers did not just settle for a simple range-only or air-search radar. They essentially redesigned the airframe to accommodate the powerful Hughes APG-65, the same multi-mode radar used on the F/A-18 Hornet. This means that in the fall of 1996, the Harrier force will add the mighty AIM-120 AMRAAM missile to their weapons suite, making it one of the most dangerous birds in the sky. Since the radar adds some 900 lb/408 kg of weight, and extends the airframe by 17 in./43 cm, a completely new fuselage was fabricated, and a new engine installed. The last twenty-four production Harrier IIs were built to the Plus standard. After that, additional aircraft will be "remanufactured." To save money, the wing, tail surfaces, landing gear, ejection seats, and other major components of existing AV-8 Bs are being recycled to produce a new aircraft, at about two-thirds the cost of manufacturing a completely new aircraft. Italy (sixteen aircraft) and Spain (eight aircraft) are sharing in the development cost and production of the Harrier II Plus, under an agreement signed in September 1990. The Marine Corps plans to remanufacture seventy-three airframes to the II Plus configuration. The first Harrier II Plus made its inaugural flight on September 22nd, 1992.

Harriers will remain in service with the Marines well into the 21st century. Most likely, they will gradually be replaced sometime after 2010 by a variant of the Air Force/Navy STOVL joint strike fighter (JSF), which is currently in the early stages of development. Between now and then, the variety of weapons loads and mission capabilities are due to greatly increase. For example, there will soon be a competition for a laser targeting/designation pod for the centerline stores station, which will allow the Harrier to employ laser guided bombs and missiles by itself.

Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

They used to be called "drones" or "remote controlled" (R/C) aircraft. Today we call them UAVs ("unmanned aerial vehicles") to emphasize that they operate without a human pilot on board. The idea of a pilotless aircraft makes many pilots feel uneasy. ("This machine wants your job… and it might cause a mid-air.") Since pilots become the Generals and Admirals who call the shots in military aviation, UAVs have had to overcome deeply entrenched institutional resistance to win acceptance. All the same, the advantages of a UAV are obvious. For one thing, compared to a manned aircraft, it can be made very small and cheap. For another, advances in software and miniaturized electronics have made it possible to provide relatively "intelligent" autopilots. And the development of miniaturized video cameras in stabilized mountings ("steadicams") provides high-resolution imagery, day or night. Even if the enemy manages to shoot one down, it makes a lousy hostage.

In early 1996 the Pioneer is the only UAV operational with the U.S. Navy, Army, and Marine Corps. Pioneer was developed in the 1970s by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), and it played a key role in the 1982 Bekaa Valley air campaign, in which the Israeli Defense Forces utterly smashed Syria's advanced Soviet-made integrated air-defense system. In 1985, following our own miserable experience in Lebanon, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman ordered the immediate procurement of an off-the-shelf UAV, to be carried on board the newly reactivated and modernized Iowa-class battleships, where they were to be used for gunfire spotting, reconnaissance, and battle-damage assessment, which had so far been impossible in Lebanon. Pioneer won the competition, and entered service with the fleet late in 1986. The following year, the Marine Corps procured additional Pioneers to operate from LPDs or mobile ground bases. In 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, six Pioneer units deployed to the Persian Gulf, flying some 523 missions. One of these unmanned aircraft earned a unique place in aviation history when an Iraqi unit attempted to surrender to it.

Pioneer has a wingspan of 17 ft/5.2 m, and a length of 14 ft/4.3 m, Empty weight is only 2641b/120 kg, and maximum takeoff weight is 4291b/195 kg. A 26-hp 2-stroke piston engine drives the pusher-type wooden propeller, located between twin tail booms. The engine also drives an electrical generator to power the sensor package, flight controls, and data link. Pioneer can reach a ceiling of 15,000 ft/4,600 m, but missions are generally flown at 3.280 ft/1,000 m or less. Top speed is 110 kt/204 kph, but the normal cursing speed is 65 kt/120 kph. Mission endurance is around five hours, allowing a tactical mission radius of about 100 nm/185 km. Fuel capacity is 12 gal/49 L of 100-octane aviation gasoline, mixed with a small amount of motor oil. Pioneer breaks down easily into modular components for storage in rugged shipping containers, which the crews call "bird boxes." For shipboard operations, Pioneer requires a rocket-assisted takeoff, which needs very little deck space. For ground operation, there is a truck-mounted pneumatic catapult. At the end of a shipboard mission, Pioneer is flown into a nylon recovery net rigged on the fantail of the ship, like a big volleyball net. When a runway is available, it can make a normal takeoff or landing on its fixed tricycle landing gear.

Pioneer can carry one of two standard electro-optical payloads, either of which can be swapped out in about an hour. The day package includes a stabilized, turret-mounted monochrome video camera with a full zoom. A full-color camera has been proposed as an upgrade, trading off contrast for color information. Color might also require a data link with higher bandwidth. The night package includes a high-resolution FLIR system, which can zoom to fixed lengths, and can be switched between "white hot" and "black hot" display modes. The radio command and data link uses the spread-spectrum technique, which is highly resistant to jamming. Since Pioneer is constructed from lightweight composite materials, it has a very low radar cross-section. It is equipped with a standard Mode 3 IFF transponder, allowing friendly aircraft to track it and avoid airspace conflicts. The system software automatically displays the time and date, geographic coordinates, and range to target on the imagery transmitted over the data link. It also generates symbology showing the aircraft flight direction and attitude, similar to the HUD (Heads-Up Display) of a fighter aircraft, but much simpler.

Four Landing Assault Ships (LPDs) are currently equipped to operate Pioneer. A UAV detachment consists of about thirty personnel and five air vehicles. The control station is an air-conditioned shelter with separate consoles for the flight operator and the sensor operator, who work under the supervision of a mission commander. The flight operator hands off control of an aircraft to a remote Portable Control Station for landings and recovery. A tracking technician operates the tracking and communication system, which requires a pole antenna and a steerable dish antenna, which may be installed on the ship, or mounted on a light truck. A recording technician operates the videocassette recorders, which can feed their signals to other ships and ground stations.

Pioneer has suffered some reliability problems due largely to insufficient procurement of spare parts. In operation, Pioneers often suffer minor damage when they hit the recovery net, and the complex sensor packages demand highly skilled maintenance. Nevertheless, they have proven to be invaluable national assets. So much so that additional vehicles are about to be procured. The Pioneer system will continue to serve well into the 21st century. The prime contractor is Pioneer UAV, Inc., a joint venture of Israel Aircraft Industries and AAI Corporation, located in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

Bell-Textron UH-1N Twin Harvey

Every American war has its distinctive icons in our collective historical imagination. For the Civil War, it's the forage cap and the 12-pounder bronze smoothbore "Napoleon" cannon. For the Second World War, it's the Sherman tank and the GI helmet. For Vietnam it's the "boonie hat" and the Bell UH-1 helicopter. Officially it's called the Iroquois, because the Army insists that helicopters should be named after Indian tribes. But to the troops, it will always be simply the "Huey." Based on a 1955 Army design competition, the UH-1 made its maiden flight on October 22nd 1956. Over eleven thousand have been produced in a dozen major models and countless variants. In 1996 it remains in production around the world.

A major factor in the longevity of an aircraft design is the ability of the airframe to accommodate more powerful engines. No pilot worth his or her wings ever thinks an aircraft has enough thrust or lift. The initial batch of production Hueys had an anemic (by current standards) 700-hp Lycoming turboshaft engine. The current model has a pair of Pratt and Whitneys, each rated at 900 hp each, but with burst transmission power rating of up to 1,290 hp.

Originally intended as an angel of mercy for battlefield casualty evacuation, the Huey proved to be a jack-of-all-trades, providing a bird's-eye view of the battlefield for commanders and forward observers, ferrying troops in and out of hot landing zones, hauling cargo to mountaintop fire bases, and serving as a platform for door-mounted machine guns and rockets. Hueys are currently the only aircraft being used by all four services — the USAF still uses a small number for VIP transport, missile range safety, and support of remote missile silos. The first Huey designed for the Marine Corps was the UH-1E, which entered service with MAG-26 in February 1964. It was equipped with an uprated 1,400-hp engine, a rescue hoist, improved electronics, and a rotor brake (to lock the rotor in position, fore and aft, for shipboard parking).

The current Marine version is the UH-1N, which was introduced in 1971, of which 111 remain in inventory. The pilot and copilot are supplemented for combat missions by a pair of door gunners manning 7.62mm or .50-cal. machine guns. Their primary mission is to act as a command and control platform for MEF and MEU (SOC) commanders. To this end, a special communications package can be fitted to the Marine Huey for use by a task force commander. The Marines figure the current upgrade cost at $4.7 million. The big news about the Huey these days is the planned upgrade program, which will be combined with a similar upgrade for the AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter. Beyond that, current plans have the UH-1N serving until about 2020, when a command and control version of the new V-22 Osprey will probably take over the job.

Bell Textron AH-1W Cobra Attack Helicopter

The Iraqis called it the "skinny bird." The Marines call it "Whiskey Cobra." "Whiskey" is the military phonetic code for the letter W. Whatever you call it, it's one of the most lethal and versatile flying machines on the battlefield, the Bell Textron AH-1 W Cobra. The origins of the attack helicopter can be traced back to the long, bloody colonial war in Algeria in the 1950s, where the French Army experimentally rigged guns up to 20mm to their light Alouette helicopters. In Vietnam, the U.S. Army carried out similar experiments with automatic weapons and rocket pods on various models of the Huey. It soon became obvious that hitting a moving target from a moving helicopter required some kind of fire-control system more sophisticated than the Mark 1 human eyeball. It was also clear that the workload of flying a helicopter, especially when people on the ground were shooting back, made it necessary to divide the combat tasks between a pilot and a gunner. As helicopter losses mounted, it was also clear that to survive, a gunship would need to present the smallest possible target, and carry as much protective armor as the engine(s) could lift.

The result was the Army's original AH-1G Cobra (Army aviators call it "The Snake"). This used the engine, transmission, and rotor of the Huey, installed in a very narrow fuselage, with a gunner seated in the forward cockpit and the pilot seated behind and above him. Two stub wings provided mounting points for rockets and machine-gun pods, and a nose-mounted turret provided room for a machine gun, or 40mm grenade launcher. The Marines were sufficiently impressed with the new birds to ask for the loan of thirty-eight Army Cobras, which were pressed into service for Vietnam. Experience with these early Cobras convinced Marine aviators that they needed more power, which meant a second engine. Shipboard operation also required adding a rotor brake, which locked the rotor in the fore-and-aft position for reduced stowage space. Designated the AH-1J Sea Cobra, the aircraft was upgunned with a three-barrel rotary 20mm cannon mounted in a power-driven chin turret, allowing the gunner to fire on targets up to 110deg off the nose.

The Sea Cobra entered service in 1971 with HMA-269, and sixty-nine aircraft were eventually delivered. An improved version, designated AH-1T was stretched 3 ft, 7 in./ 1.1 m to provide additional internal fuel. It was also equipped to launch the TOW antitank missile. This led to the ultimate Cobra design, the AH-1W "Super Cobra," which entered service early in 1986, powered by two GE T700 engines rated at 1,690 hp each. Maximum level speed is 175 kt/320 kph, and the maximum range with internal fuel is 395 mi/636 km. The Whiskey Cobra has a laser range finder and stabilized optical system mounted in the nose, carries chaff and flare launchers, and has a "Black Hole" IR signature-suppression system that mixes outside air with the hot engine exhaust. Up to eight TOW or Hellfire missiles can be carried. The stub wings can even be fitted with launch rails for the AIM-9 Sidewinder, enabling Cobra to engage enemy helicopters or aircraft. By 1996, over one hundred new aircraft had been delivered, while more than 42 older "-1T" birds have been upgraded to the AH-1 W configuration. They serve with six operational squadrons and a training unit, HMT-303 at Camp Pendleton, California.

During Desert Storm, the typical weapons load was a pair of LAU-68 rocket pods on the inboard pylons, with anti-tank missiles outboard. Marine Cobras played a key role in the battle of Khafji, decimating Iraqi armor. One Marine commander watched in amazement as an Iraqi artillery round detonated directly underneath a hovering Cobra. The helicopter shuddered and continued its mission. Despite sand-storms and salt fog, the Super Cobra maintained a 92 % mission-readiness rate, 24 % better than the Army's more complex (and much better publicized) AH-64A Apache, which required continuous support by civilian contractor technicians.

Current plans for upgrading the Whiskey Cobra will extend the service life of the fleet until at least 2020. One goal is to achieve commonality of engine, transmission, and other systems between the AH-1W and the UH-1N, thereby reducing maintenance costs and spare parts inventories. Key changes will include a new composite four-bladed rotor for improved agility and lower noise and vibration levels, an improved night-targeting system (NTS) based on an Israeli design, and numerous digital cockpit display improvements to reduce the pilot and gunner workload. The NTS system is designed to provide Marine Cobra crews with the same kind of FLIR and laser-designation system that is carried by the AH-64A Apache and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. This means that it will be able to self-designate for delivery of Hellfire missiles, or even Paveway laser-guided bombs. By the time the program is completed, it will mean that the Cobra fleet will remain viable into the second decade of the 21st century. By that time, an attack version of the V-22 Osprey is a likely development, and may finally replace this classic warbird.

Boeing Vertol CH-46E Sea Knight

In the late 1940s, a visionary group of young Marine officers began to explore the possibilities that rapidly evolving helicopter technology offered for amphibious assault. They called the new concept "vertical envelopment." As the main landing force came ashore over the beach, small helicopter-borne detachments would seize key terrain and blocking positions deep behind the enemy's coastal defenses. Something like this had been tried with parachute and glider-borne infantry in the Normandy invasion, but the confused and scattered night drop had nearly turned into a disaster. During the Korean War, the small numbers of fragile piston-engined helicopters available had proved their value in medical evacuation of the injured and battlefield observation for commanders. But it took the development of helicopters powered by turbine engines in the early 1960s to make the dream of vertical envelopment a reality.

Forbidden to operate its own fixed-wing armed aircraft, the U.S. Army adopted helicopters enthusiastically, developing a doctrine called airmobile warfare. It was an expensive way to fight a war, though. By one estimate, over four thousand American helicopters were shot down in Vietnam while practicing airmobile warfare. One of the helicopters very much present in Vietnam was the CH-46E, the now-aging workhorse of Marine helicopters. "Sea Knight" may be the official nickname, but Marines call them Bullfrogs. The aircraft entered service with Marine Medium Helicopter (HMM-265) in June 1964. The Navy and Marine Corps procured a total of 624 units, which served through the Vietnam War and in every Marine operation since then. Production ended in 1977, and the current inventory is 242 aircraft. Despite the best maintenance and several service-life extensions, these machines are quite simply worn out. They continue in service today with 15 HMMs, for lack of any replacement. However, when the V-22 Osprey finally enters service they will be retired rapidly.

The CH-46 is a twin-engine, twin-rotor design, which eliminates the need for a tail rotor. The three-bladed fiberglass rotors rotate in opposite directions, and are designed to fold for shipboard storage. Each General Electric T-58-16 turboshaft engine is rated at 1770 horsepower. Both engines are mounted side by side above the tail, leaving the cabin relatively unobstructed, and incredibly noisy. The transmission is cross-connected, so that in case of damage or failure on one engine, the remaining engine can drive both rotors, albeit with vastly less performance. Marines enter and exit through a loading ramp at the rear, or forward passengers doors on either side. Maximum speed is 161 kt/259 kph, and since the fuselage is unpressurized, the maximum practical altitude is about 14,000 ft/4,267 m. The cabin is watertight, and can safely land in choppy seas, but this is an emergency procedure, not a normal operational technique.

A normal flight crew includes pilot, copilot, crew chief, and mechanic. On combat missions, the mechanic is replaced by two door gunners, and up to twenty additional troops can theoretically be carried. The gradual increase in overall weight, due to the addition of defensive electronic countermeasures, armor, and reinforced structure, has seriously reduced the actual carrying capacity of the surviving aircraft. In matter of fact, only eight to twelve loaded troops can be carried. For medical evacuation missions, the capacity is fifteen litters and two corpsmen. Up to 5,000 lb/2270 kg of cargo can be carried as an external sling load. Officially, the combat radius is given as 75 nm/139 km, but in practice the aircraft are limited to about 50 nm/91 km from their mother ship. As for the future, there will be one more planned upgrade of the Bullfrog fleet to keep it going until the MV-22 Osprey arrives in the early 21st century. Only then will the noble CH-46 take its place as a "gate guard" for Marine bases around the world.

Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion Helicopter

One of the star aerial performers in the Vietnam War was an Air Force adaptation of a big Navy helicopter, Sikorsky's HH-3 "Jolly Green Giant." These served with units like the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron, flying deep into enemy jungle and mountain areas to rescue crash survivors, often under fire. Apparently, to survive on the battlefield, it isn't enough just to be agile and smart; a helicopter needs to be big and tough. The Marines were impressed enough with the HH-3 to order a new heavy assault helicopter, the CH-53A "Sea Stallion," which combined the Jolly Green Giant's fuselage and basic design with the twin engines and heavy-duty transmission of the Army's monster CH-54 Tarhe "flying crane." The Sea Stallion first flew on October 14th, 1964, and entered service with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron (HMH) 463 in November 1966. When production of the basic Stallion ended in 1980, the Navy and Marine Corps had taken delivery of 384 aircraft, and additional Stallions were serving with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Austria, Germany, Iran, and Israel. By that time though, a second-generation Stallion was in the works, and was ready to enter production, the CH-53E Super Stallion.

The Sikorsky CH-53E is both big and tough. You want redundant systems? How about three engines? And how about seven rotor blades, with main spars forged from titanium? You need to fit a big helicopter on a small deck? How about folding rotor blades and a hinged tail boom, which together reduce the overall length (including rotors) from 99 ft/30.2 m down to 60 ft, 6 in./18.4m! The landing gear is fully retractable and the fuselage is watertight, in case of an emergency landing at sea. An in-flight refueling probe provides almost unlimited potential range, as long as an appropriate tanker aircraft (such as a KC-130 Hercules) is available. The cargo hook can handle an external sling load of up to 36,000 1b/16,330 kg, which means that a LAV or M198 howitzer can be delivered by air. With a sixteen-ton load, the combat radius is 50 nm/92.5 km, though this increases to 500 nm/926 km with a ten-ton sling load. No radar or FLIR is fitted, but the crews train to operate with night-vision goggles. In addition, no armament is permanently fitted, though machine gunners can easily rig machine guns to fire from the forward crew door and either side of the open rear loading ramp. The normal crew consists of a pilot, copilot, and crew chief. Up to fifty-five fully loaded troops can be carried in reasonable discomfort on folding canvas seats. A passenger tip, though: Don't sit directly under the rotor head, where the transmission tends to drip hot hydraulic oil.

The Marines have a requirement for 183 of these mission-critical birds, of which 155 had been delivered by the end of 1995, and production continues at a low rate of four per year. Eleven also have been built for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force under license by Mitsubishi. With a SLEP underway, the Super Stallions are expected to serve until about 2025. By any measure — range, payload, speed, or survivability — the CH-53E is an awesome hunk of aeronautical technology. Back in the days when money was no object, the Soviet Union managed to produce a bigger troop-carrying helicopter, the Mi-26 "Halo." But nobody has ever built a better one.

The Future: Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

During the 1950s the United States built over a thousand B-47 medium bombers. During the 1990s, the most bitter and protracted budget battles managed to provide only twenty-one B-2A stealth bombers, each costing more than a billion dollars. More aircraft have been killed by cost overruns in the design and development stage than have ever been downed by enemy guns and missiles, pilot errors, or engine flameouts. Projecting the trend into the 21st century, industry observers sometimes joke about a future when the entire defense budget will only suffice to purchase one aircraft; Air Force pilots will be allowed to fly it Monday through Thursday, Navy aviators on Friday and Saturday, and the Marines on alternate Sundays, if it isn't down for maintenance.

With these depressing realities in mind, there are two technical approaches to making a high-performance aircraft affordable. First, make it light. Every non-essential pound/kilogram imposes severe cost and performance penalties. The best example of how to make an aircraft light, simple, and advanced is the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk — Ed Heinemann's classic 1951 design — a five-ton airplane designed to deliver a one-ton nuclear bomb with a single engine of 7,700 1b of thrust. Second, make it generic. That is, make a single basic airframe design serve the widest possible range of roles and missions. Beginning in the late 1980s, under the acronym JAST (Joint Advanced Strike Technologies), a Defense Department Program Office made a serious effort to push these approaches right to the "edge of the envelope." The aerospace industry, seeing the only opportunity for a major new program in the opening decades of the next century, responded with enthusiasm. Now called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the program office is headed by a rear admiral, who reports to an Air Force Assistant Secretary.

Pilots tend to be exceedingly suspicious of anything with the word "joint" attached to it, unless they are talking to an orthopedic surgeon about a sports injury. From an aviator's perspective, a "joint" aircraft is likely turn into a camel (i.e., a "horse designed by a committee"). The three services have radically different tactical doctrines and tribal cultures, and even the most brilliant design team will face a thicket of compromises in trying to fit one airframe to such widely different customers. If you are flying an aircraft into combat, you want that feeling of confidence that only comes from knowing that the designer made no compromises with anything, including the laws of physics. JSF's program managers, aware of this issue, are striving for a relatively modest goal-80 %, "commonality" of major structural components and systems.

JSF is actually three aircraft. A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) model will replace the Air Force's F-16 Fighting Falcon, with a unit price target of $28 million, and an awesome procurement target of 1,874 units. A Navy version to replace the aging F-14 Tomcat and early F/A-18 Hornet types will have a strengthened fuselage structure and special landing gear for carrier operations, raising the unit cost to between $35 and $38 million, with a requirement for at least 300 units. The Marine version, to replace the Harrier, will be capable of short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL), at a unit price of $30–32 million. The Marines want 642 units. Three industry teams are competing for the contract. They include Boeing, McDonnell Douglas/Northrop Grumman/British Aerospace, and Lockheed Martin.

All the designs show a strong influence from the F-22 and F-23 advanced stealth fighter designs, with widely separated twin tail fins, splayed out at a sharp angle. The Boeing design has a hinged air scoop under the nose, which gives the aircraft an uncanny resemblance to a gasping fish. The inlet swings down to increase airflow to the engine at low speeds, and swings up to reduce overall drag at high speed. The twin exhaust nozzles rotate, just like on the Harrier. The McDonnell design looks like a slimmed-down F-23, with sharply swept wings mounted well aft. The Lockheed Martin design has a vertically mounted lift fan, driven during takeoff by power from the main engine, just behind the cockpit. There are small canards (auxiliary wings) mounted just forward of the main wings, which closely resemble the diamond-shaped planform of the F-22. In effect, there will be as many as nine different prototype designs, all using the Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan developed for the F-22. This was the first turbofan capable of supersonic cruise without use of a gas-guzzling afterburner. General Electric will also continue development of its F-120 engine, which was not selected in the F-22 competition, but represents a viable alternative if F-119 development runs into difficulties.

For the JSF program, failure is not an option. Low-rate initial production is scheduled to begin in 2005, and deliveries to operational units are pegged for 2007. By that date, several generations of combat aircraft will be facing block obsolescence, even if we are lucky and no unexpected new threats emerge. Many types that are familiar sights in 1996 will have been prematurely retired, due to escalating maintenance and support costs, airframe fatigue, and normal peacetime attrition.

The Future: The Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey

We call it a helicopter only because it takes off and lands vertically, but the V-22 Osprey really performs like a small C-130 Hercules transport. As for the importance of the program, the Osprey is designed to replace the entire fleet of CH-46 Sea Knights, which will be entering their fifth decade of service by the time that the V-22 arrives on the scene. It also represents the single biggest technological gamble in the history of the Marine Corps. On the strange wings of the Osprey, the Marines have bet not only their ability to conduct vertical envelopment assaults, but the whole future of over-the-horizon/standoff amphibious warfare.

Ever since the Wright brothers began to fly heavier-than-air vehicles on the Atlantic shore at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, there has been a dream that you could build an airplane that would take off vertically like a helicopter and still fly like a conventional airplane. The Harrier represents one set of engineering compromises to achieve this, though at a high cost in range and payload. But even tougher to build than a fighter/bomber is a medium lift transport aircraft with the lifting performance of a CH-46 and the speed and range of a C-130 Hercules. Back in the 1950s the idea was put forth that perhaps you could place the engines of such an aircraft out on the ends of the wings, then tilt the engines in much the same way that the vectored thrust nozzles of the Harrier's Pegasus engine rotate. The first aircraft demonstrates this was the Bell XV-3, which flew in 1955, and spent eleven years testing out the tilt-rotor concept. Following this, NASA had Bell build a more advanced aircraft, the XV-15, which first flew in 1976. This incredible experimental aircraft's achievements are still legend in the flight-test world. It proved once and for all that a tilt rotor transport aircraft was not only possible, but would have some very desirable qualities.

Next came the multi-service Joint Vertical Experimental (JVX) requirement, for over five hundred tilt rotor transport aircraft for combat search and rescue (CSAR), special operations (SPECOPS), medical evacuation (MEDEVAC), and replacement of the entire fleet of CH-46 Sea Knights and CH-53D Sea Stallions. In 1983, a team of Bell-Textron and Boeing Vertol won the JVX contract for design and development of what would become known as the V-22 Osprey. Development continued throughout the 1980s, and appeared to be going well despite the usual glitches associated with any new aircraft. Then, as a cost-cutting move, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney abruptly canceled the entire program in 1989, leaving Bell Boeing with a big nothing for all their work, and all four of the services scrambling to find replacements for the Osprey. As it turned out, they never did, and this caused a small guerrilla movement to break out among the services to revive the V-22. As if this was not enough of a challenge, there were a pair of crashes by prototype V-22s (neither of which was design-related), which gave opponents lots of ammunition for keeping the program canceled. Though no one was lost in the first accident, in the second, all seven aboard were killed; and things looked bleak for the Osprey and those who had backed it.

Then, in 1993, good things began to happen for the V-22. The coming of a new Administration allowed the Department of Defense to take a fresh look at the aircraft and the requirements it was meant to fulfill. After a small mountain of studies, the Clinton Administration decided to restart the Osprey production program, and began to work towards a planned initial operational capability for the first squadron of 2001. Since that time, the first new production Ospreys, officially designated MV- 22B (this is the Marine variant), have been mated and are moving towards final assembly. The first flight is scheduled for 1996, and the program is moving along well; it's on time and on budget. As an added bonus, the other three services have reevaluated their requirements and are beginning to get back into the V-22 program, with the Air Force's SPECOPS program first among the newcomers. Current program production plans have the USMC buying 425, the Air Force 50 for special operations, and the Navy 48 for CSAR, for a planned total of 523 units. Current cost estimates place the average flyaway cost (including non-recurring R&D costs) of around $32 million a copy, though Bell-Boeing thinks that they can get that down to under $29 million.

As currently planned, the MY-22 will be about 57 ft, 4 in./25.8 m long with a wingspan of 50 ft, 11 in./15.5 m, and a height of 22 ft, 7 in./6.9 m. It will weigh in empty at 31,886 1b/14,463 kg, and will have a maximum takeoff weight of 60,500 lb/27,947 kg in a STOVL mode. Maximum payload will be twenty-four fully loaded troops or 20,000 1b/9,072 kg of cargo. Performance will include a top-level flight speed of 314 kt/582 kph and a maximum ferry range of around 2,100 nm/3,829 km, and a tactical range of around 1,800 nm/3,336 km. These are impressive numbers for an aircraft with roughly the same folded dimensions as the CH-46. Inside the MV-22B will be a cockpit that is arguably the most advanced of any aircraft in the world. Based on the cockpit of the Air Force's MH-53J Pave Low III SPECOPS helicopter and the MC-130H Combat Talon II aircraft, it has undergone many improvements in the years that the program has taken to mature. This is a good thing, because a few years back, I nearly killed myself and a few other folks in a full-motion V-22 flight simulator, trying to fly the thing like a normal helicopter. Today, the MV-22's two man cockpit looks a lot like a normal military cockpit, with a control stick, left-side thrust control lever, and a whole panel of flat multi-function displays (MFDs) to show them all of the vital flight data. This includes a moving-map display tied to a GPS aided inertia navigation system, so that pinpoint, split-second landing operations can become the rule rather than the exception. There is also a FLIR pilotage system to allow enhanced night operations. The entire aircraft is sealed against chemical, nuclear, and biological threats by an overpressure /filter system.

Flying this new bird is, to say the least, a bit strange. I got to try it on the new mission simulator at Bell's Plant in Fort Worth, Texas, and it was an eye-opener. To lift off, you advance the thrust control lever on your left forward, and the MV-22 lifts off smoothly. To transition to high-speed level flight, you push a small thumbwheel on the thrust control forward, and the engines rotate down in 3deg increments. Once they are in the full "down" position, you are essentially flying a high-performance turboprop transport, which is actually quite agile and comfortable. To land, you begin to pull back on the thumbwheel, causing the engines to rotate back to the vertical. The fly-by-wire system makes this very comfortable, and your eyes begin to transition to the MFD, which tells you the sink rate towards the ground. This is the critical condition to watch, because you need to keep this fairly low. Tilt-rotor aircraft cannot apply power quite as fast as normal helicopters, and you have to think a little "ahead" to make this go smoothly. If you've done it right, you should feel a gentle "thump," and you are down.

Right now, the biggest problem facing the Osprey program is the planned rate of procurement. Originally, the Clinton Administration had planned to buy less than two dozen a year. This meant that the buy would run out to the year 2025. General Krulak is planning to speed this up to around thirty-six a year, so that the procurement of MV-22B will be completed before 2010. In this way, he hopes to avoid a funding conflict between Osprey and the planned JSF buy.