Q & A GEN. JAMES F. AMOS, USMC
ashore in surface connectors, logis- tics working, and naval and Marine combined arms. That’s always been our bread and butter, and we have kept our foot in that door, though not to the degree we would like. We can get back to our combined arms skill sets reasonably easily. It will take a detailed effort, but we have that plan. We train infantry battalions that are deploying at [Ma- rine Corps Air Ground Combat Cen- ter] Twentynine Palms, Calif. We try to take our logistics battalions and aviation squadrons there, too. We run them through Enhanced Mojave Viper, 30 days’ training that we make as real as possible. We have Afghans [and] Afghan villages to try to replicate everything these [Ma- rines] will be exposed to. We also have built training pack- ages for larger-size Marine Expedi- tionary brigades or forces of 60,000 to 70,000, so we know what these exercises will look like. We are wait- ing for the tempo of deployment in Afghanistan to wane, and we’ll start blowing that balloon up to brigade- size exercises. That’s how we’ll get back in our skill sets.
The Corps faces modernization challenges. Let’s start with the Joint Strike Fighter, which looked to be in jeopardy. It certainly was [in] fall [2010]. Our version, the F-35B STOVL aircraft, was the headliner [for program problems]. As in all developmental test programs, this plane was “breaking trail” or doing some early test work for all F-35 models.
So some of the early challenges would have been found ... Yes, with any model. We just happened to have more airplanes in testing stage. The Navy hadn’t delivered its first test plane until
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this spring, so everybody could say its version was doing well. Well, it wasn’t even off the production line yet. So the F-35B was the pioneer for a lot of software and flight- control issues that will be common among all versions.
On the other hand, the F-35B did
need oversight help. It got it [in] November/December [2010]. You now are looking at the player-coach for the F-35B. Nobody in the Marine Corps is more interested in the F-35B than I am. My sense is service chiefs have ab-
rogated their responsibility to bring in these large, expensive programs. Congress gives us a pile of money. We hand it over to a program man- ager because he’s trained in acquisi- tion and has got all these certificates and diplomas on his wall. We’ve been focused on the rest of the things the Marine Corps does, like fight- ing wars. Meanwhile, the program churns away. Decisions are made inside the program on requirements and engineering fixes that the service chief doesn’t know about. Then one day, as happened last October [2010] with F-35B, the program office comes to the secretary of defense and says, “We need another $4.4 billion because of XYZ.” Then it’s, “Holy smokes! How did this happen?” Service chiefs are saying, “I need that airplane! How come I didn’t know about this?” We are not going to do that in the Marine Corps.
So the program manager decided whether an added feature was worth the cost. Your point is the service chief should know what’s going into that aircraft and driving up the cost, correct? Exactly. Service chiefs, on big expensive programs, have been afraid to stick our nose in. Early on, in program development, we
write a bunch of requirements. We say we want an airplane that can do this and that. Engineers will engineer something to do that. But they’re not worried, for example, about weight; they worry about strength and endurance. Into the development and test- ing phases, there has to be discus- sion about what’s good enough. If the combat radius for an airplane — and I’m making this up — is to be 753 miles, but it tests at only at 715 miles, is 715 miles good enough if it will cost another $1.5 billion to get to 753 miles? There are trade-offs the requirement guys can make if they can sit down with a program office. That’s the engagement of the service chiefs. It has to be done early on, before a thing is locked in hard steel and you can’t turn it around. Service chiefs have got to get back to that sense of ownership.
You also have criticized the speed of the acquisition process for developing and fielding major weapon systems. I recommended that the Exped- itionary Fighting Vehicle [EFV] be canceled. [The Marine Corps had spent $3 billion on development before then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in January that many more billions would be saved canceling the program to build 550 vehicles.] The requirement still exists for an amphibious tractor to bring Ma-
(facing page from top) Marines work to recover a Humvee during Enhanced Mojave Viper training at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms, Calif. Two F-35B test aircraft complete a formation test point March 17. A Marine participates in a live-fire shoot during Enhanced Mo- jave Viper training in April.
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