The Marines want new missiles for multiple missions: attacking enemy aircraft, ships at sea, and ground targets. But getting them on a tight budget will require working closely with the Army and Navy.
"That'll be the uphill battle, getting this through conference," a Senate staffer told me. "I told DoD (the Department of Defense), if you don’t like what’s in our mark, you know your strategy: Go talk to HASC (the House Armed Services Committee).
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
"There is a good chance… we’d lose the opening stages of this war," said one speaker. "Parts of the Pacific, parts of Europe are probably going to be overrun before we can gather ourselves."
The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act came from freshman Congressman Jimmy Panetta, son of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and a Navy Reserve veteran of Afghanistan.
It's important to explore a wide range of options and not lock down requirements too early, Lt. Gen. Walsh said. (By contrast, FCS set precise objectives and only then looked to see if they were possible). "We're trying to solve the problem of what is reconnaissance (and) counter-reconnaissance in the future," he said, not simply replace an old vehicle with a new one.
“Everything that Marine wears -- from their boots to their socks to their utilities to their helmet -- is all going to be changed," the Commandant said. "We’ve got money now to do that, and so we’ve got to make it happen now. We’ve got to make it happen now, because I’m not going to make the assumption that that money’s going to be there.”
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
Wait for it -- the costs of Lockheed Martin's Presidential Helicopter Replacement program, known as the VH-92, have come down 2.4 percent, about $123 million to $5.06 billion, and it appears on schedule. But -- you knew there'd be a but.
The Marines are plenty happy about getting more money in 2018 and 2019, but are nervously eyeing the potential return of sequestration in 2020. And it's influencing how the Corps is spending that money today.
“All too often when we bring things up inside the Beltway, it immediately devolves to material and programs and technology," said Scales. "What we hope comes out of this is not just new machines but new ways of thinking about warfare at the tactical level.”
"I'd say six to seven years to essentially work out the Concept of Operations (and) develop the capabilities," Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves told the Senate.
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
"'Battle' is very tactical," said another participant approvingly. "We've got to have a cultural shift." We need to recognize we're in conflict right now with great power adversaries, even if we're not shooting at each other.
The catch, of course, is that the Army's tried to field all these things before -- and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.
It was a Marine reservist, transport officer Maj. Chris Thobaben, who had the idea to repurpose the scout drones for logistics after seeing too many comrades killed or wounded on supply runs in Iraq.
"To get a quantum increase in the quality of close combat forces, we can do it in the next two years, (and) the cost compared to the rest of the DoD budget is very small," said retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, who chairs the advisory board for Secretary Mattis's Close Combat Lethality Task Force.