Navy, Corps shelve shared missions boost

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An F/A-18A Hornet, assigned to the Red Devils of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, goes into after burner to take off from the flight deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz. Nimitz is operating as part of the U.S. 7th Fleet in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.


Navy, Corps shelve shared missions boost
By Chris Amos - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 9, 2008 8:13:20 EDT

A Navy and Marine Corps plan to integrate Navy and Marine strike fighter squadrons has been put on hold, replaced by a “capabilities-based scheduling approach” that one defense analyst says is a tacit admission that integrating strike fighter communities was a bad idea to begin with.

In 2003, then-Navy Secretary Gordon England, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark and then-Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones inked an agreement to place a Marine F/A-18 Hornet squadron in each of the Navy’s 10 carrier air wings and its three Hornet squadrons assigned to ground-based, close-air support missions normally flown by Marines, starting in 2012.

The agreement was updated in 2005 and again earlier this year. Each time, Navy and Marine officials strayed further from its original objective.

Marine spokesman Maj. Eric Dent said the need to provide close-air support for ground units in Iraq forced Navy Department officials to pull back from the plan because attempts to adhere to the agreement had “significant negative effects on operations and readiness.”

For now, officials have settled for having a minimum of two Marine Hornet squadrons assigned to carrier air wings, with an additional Marine squadron assigned to a carrier air wing for every Navy squadron fulfilling a unit deployment program. Because there is now just one Navy squadron assigned to a UDP, just three of 13 Marine Hornet squadrons are assigned to carrier air wings. An additional Marine Hornet squadron should be assigned to a carrier air wing by 2012, Dent said.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/navy_tacair_080908w/