The Marine general nominated to be the Corps’ next commandant told Congress Tuesday that after years of battling to keep its aging fighter aircraft airworthy, the service expects to meet an 80% readiness goal by the end of the year.
The Marine Corps was suffering more than any other service from readiness woes, due to a combination of high deployment rates and spending caps that resulted in delayed maintenance, a shortage of spare parts, and insufficient pilot training.
Before he resigned in December, Defense Secretary James Mattis charged all the services with bringing the “mission-capable” rate of frontline combat aircraft to 80% by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Mattis is gone, but the goal remains.
At his hearing to be confirmed as Marine head, Lt. Gen. David Berger told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the goal is within reach.
“There’s things out of our control,” Berger testified. “We don’t have a crystal ball, but I think the path that we’re on, I should make it doable later this year to reach 80%.”
At times over the past few years, as many as 60% of the Marine Corps F-18s were not fit to fly, and older planes had to be cannibalized for spare parts to keep other planes in the air.
Berger reported that thanks to full funding in the last two defense budgets, the Corps’ tactical aviation has largely recovered.
“We’re not where we need to be yet, but we’re on the right path,” Berger said. “We would not be where we are right now in terms of readiness, in Tac-air or anywhere else, without the support of Congress.”
Berger said that at last report, 80% of F-18s were combat ready, as were 74% of F-35s. At a separate Tuesday hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer testified that the current readiness rates are slightly lower, 68% for Navy F-18s and 72% for Marine Corps F-18s.
Adm. Bill Moran, the nominee to be next chief of naval operations and a former P-3 Orion pilot, noted the problems with readiness also affect the retention of military pilots, who are hotly pursued by civilian airlines.
“There is nothing more disincentivizing to an aviator then not being able to fly,” Moran said. “And it’s more than that. It’s having to go through two or three airplanes on a preflight just to get one that will fly. And that’s where we were several years ago.”
“Pilots come in to fly, and if we can’t give them but six or seven or eight hours a month, after a while that gets really frustrating,” said Berger. “The more they fly, the happier they are, the better we are as a service. So we have to keep readiness high. It’s directly related to retention.”
