1964 Tri-Service Tilt-Wing Launch From Aircraft Carrier
This was scheduled to go into actual production but Vietnam budget priorities intervened. Not the idea ducted fan version but still pretty good IMO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buh7_xLG4ZE
Interesting point and I experienced that mindset long ago
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Originally Posted by
Entropy
I'm reminded of something. When I was in the Navy during the 1990's we and the Marines had an expeditionary raiding mindest. We didn't do campaign-level planning - that was something left to the Army and Air Force. I've been out of the Navy for a while now and wonder if raiding is still a part of the culture and skill-set.
and was convinced it was wise and an excellent strategy. I've heard, read or seen nothing in the past 60 years to suggest different. My sensing it is that it is not part of the skill set and I believe that is highly regrettable as well as a major shortfall in capability. In the Army, Airborne units also once had that as viable skill set and I know it's lost there. That technique is apparently not looked upon favorably by many today. Fortunately, not all agree...:wry:
We lost the bubble due to political games in DC IMO. Political games, political correctness and lack of political will... :mad:
Unfortunately, even though we went through a dril to develop such
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Funnily, that's exactly what I expected to happen after 9-11: A few raids (I thought of rangers, though), a few snatch ops, but staying out of the civil war.
capabilities in the 80s, the then senior leadership in DoD fought it to a standstill due to risk aversion. USSOCOM grabbed the ball when the Pentagon wasn't looking and convinced a lot of folks that such missions should be theirs and they developed minimal capabilities (not large or robust enough in my view -- plus large raids shouldn't be their job) but every attempt to employ those capabilities (and there were some) was stymied by DoD or the NSC. :mad:
Thus the 'invasion' occurred more due to a lack of other capability than for other reasons.
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And then imagine my surprise when it became clear that the Westerns were there to stay...*insert board-incompatible language here*.
Heh. You were not alone... :D
Hopefully, we'll get smarter in the future and develop both the capabilities for strategic raids and the political will to employ them. :cool:
Apparently the EFV is causing concern to others too ...
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Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
It is the USMC vision that concerns me - thus my reference to EFV & V22.
The justification for these platforms always comes back to some very contestable assumptions.
In fact, it's not just the USMC vision, but ideas about the capabilities of future regular threats in general that always seem to default to "this is how we would like them to be, to justify our equipment program."
Building a better mousetrap: The Unnecessary Capability of the EFV from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (link may be fernickity)
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Yet the overwhelming impetus driving the development of the EFV is operational maneuver from the sea [OMFTS]. The vision behind the EFV is one in which a group of vehicles move from apmphibious shipping twenty-five nautical miles from the shoreline and then travel at a high speed to a littoral penetration point to come ashore and seamlessly complete some tactical mission.
The layout and construction of the EFV have been optimised for that high speed movement over water. but this is not a reasonable focus. The mission profile guidance originally given to the EFV (then the AAAV) team was for a 20% operational time in the water and 80% on land. Since then, the mean operational time in the water for all envisioned EFV missions has been revised to 8.2%[!]. Thus the Marine Corps predicts the EFV to operate eight out of every one hundred hours of vehicle operation in water.
If the Marine Corps had fielded the EFV in January of 2001, the high water speed capability would not have been used in either Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation IIraqi Freedom both expeditionary operations by any standard. (p.9-10)
Marine Corps Equipment After Iraq from the Centre for American Progress.
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It [the EFV] is significantly faster on water, slighty faster on land, and has betetr armor and firepower than the AAV. On land, the EFV is also larger, more powerful, and has betetr communications than other armored personnel carriers, including the Army's Bradley. It only lacks increased armor protection, which the Marines have readily sacrificed for greater mobility. Even though the cost of the EFV has jumped to more than $12 million per vehicle....(p.14)
That last statistic made my eyes water, was a time when you could buy a JAS 39 Gripen fighter for that much (c. 1995-ish). Talk about inflation. If I'm not mistaken an M1A1 costs about $5million?
The Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV): Background and Issues for Congress from the ever informative Congressional Research Service
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Twenty years ago when the EFV was conceived, some defense officials suggested that the fleet could operate 20 to 30 miles from the shore, debarking EFVs for amphibious operations, but with the advent of these new weapons [anti-ship missiles, mines, small fast attack craft, etc.] and tactics, this is no longer possible. Instead in order to sufficiently protect the large amphibious ships that transport Marines and EFVs, it has been suggested that the fleet might need to operate at least 100 miles from shore - beyond the EFV's range.(p.7)