Tactical aviation's existential debate: to hover or not to hover?

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

When it comes to saving prized weapon systems from the budget ax, the Marine Corps has excelled like no other branch of the military.

The Marines beat back Dick Cheney and other Pentagon bosses who tried to kill the V-22 Osprey. They have, so far, managed to keep the troubled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle alive despite exorbitant cost overruns over nearly two decades and widespread criticism about its relevance to modern warfare.

Marines also have weathered episodic challenges to the notion that they need their own air force--a question that tends to bubble up during Pentagon budget crunches. With the defense budget now under pressure, it is no surprise that the Marine Corps is having to once again put up a PR front to defend one of its treasured aviation programs, the F-35B, which is the short-takeoff vertical landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, known as STOVL.

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For older marines, it is like deja vu all over again. The aircraft that the F-35B is replacing, the Harrier, also came under attack in the early 1980s as it was viewed as a threat to conventional carrier aviation. Harrier proponents prevailed and marines believe the past two decades proved there is a place on the battlefield for STOVL tactical aviation. Harrier enthusiasts are salivating at the arrival of the F-35B, which is stealthier and far more technologically advanced than its predecessor.

But the F-35B, like the JSF program as a whole, is coming of age at a time of trillion-dollar deficits and growing discontent about the nation's mounting debt. After a decade of double-digit increases in defense spending, the tide is turning and weapons such as the $120 million per-copy F-35B are under the microscope. Defense pundits specifically have questioned the utility of the STOVL F-35B, and some aviation experts have warned that the Corps should consider alternatives.

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F-35B champions were particularly miffed at comments made last month by an anonymous defense official to Brookings Institution fellow Noah Shachtman, who wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the Defense Department should consider scrapping the marine version of JSF because it is saddling a program that is already way over budget with unnecessary cost and complexity. "The marines have talked themselves into believing they really need this capability," the senior defense official told Shachtman. "But it's one we've never counted on in any fight."

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