{"id":65271,"date":"2016-04-15T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65271"},"modified":"2016-04-15T10:06:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T14:06:49","slug":"today-the-vast-majority-of-marine-corps-aircraft-cant-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65271","title":{"rendered":"“Today, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft can\u2019t fly.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fox News today has an article discussing USMC aviation readiness<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Bottom line:\u00a0 not so good.\u00a0 The article’s “money quote”:<\/p>\n

Out of 276 F\/A-18 Hornet strike fighters in the Marine Corps inventory, only about 30% are ready to fly, according to statistics provided by the Corps. Similarly, only 42 of 147 heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters are airworthy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, that’s not 100% of USMC aviation assets.\u00a0 But it’s a big portion of them.\u00a0 And if the article is accurate, well, . . . .<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Well, for pretty much the same reason as during the Carter Administration.\u00a0 Then, we were just a few years post-Vietnam – and Carter cut the defense budget radically.\u00a0 (To be fair, that began under Nixon and Ford – but continued bigtime under Carter).\u00a0 Regarding similarities to the last 5 years or so . . . well, you do the math.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t USAF, nor was I in Army aviation.\u00a0 However, I seem to remember folks in the late 1970s and 1980\/81 making similar statements about USAF and Army aircraft readiness then.\u00a0 And “hanger queens” weren’t exactly unknown among other types of military vehicles and\/or weapons systems during that time frame, either.<\/p>\n

Looks like it’s, “Welcome back, my friends” – to the Carter Administration. But anyone with 3 or more working brain cells who isn’t a libidiot<\/em> political apologist (and who hasn’t been living in a cave or on the moon) already knew that.<\/p>\n

A second quote from the linked Fox News article provided the title above.\u00a0 That linked article is IMO definitely worth a read.<\/p>\n

Just maybe wait to read it if your blood pressure is high today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fox News today has an article discussing USMC aviation readiness.\u00a0 Bottom line:\u00a0 not so good.\u00a0 The … “Today, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft can\u2019t fly.”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,189,184,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-defense-cuts","category-marine-corps","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}