ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The U.S. Marine Corps has awarded L3Harris Technologies a five-year, $88 million ceiling, single-award IDIQ contract — with an initial delivery order of $21 million — for a small, lightweight satellite terminal that delivers extremely reliable high-bandwidth voice, video and data, the company said in a Nov. 4 release.  

L3Harris will provide its Panther II Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT) as part of the Marine Corps Wideband Satellite-Expeditionary (MCWS-X) program. The MCWS-X terminal consists of the 96cm Panther II VSAT in a tri-band configuration with multiple modular modems and power options.  

A custom backpack is provided that allows any combination of band and modem to be carried in a lightweight single mission configuration.  

“The L3Harris Panther II answers the Marine Corps’ need for an extremely capable, light weight, easily deployable satellite terminal that meets the demand for reliable high bandwidth voice, video and data,” said Chris Aebli, president, Global Communication Systems, L3Harris. “Our leadership in designing and delivering innovative satellite terminal solutions, and continued investment in emerging technology, ensures our forces are always able to connect through the chaos with our family of SATCOM products.”  

The modular design of the Panther II allows the system to quickly adapt to varying missions. The operator can easily change modems, RF band, aperture size and acquisition method. To enable access to global service, the system is certified on a wide range of commercial and government satellite networks.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., a Lockheed Martin company, has received an order from the U.S. Navy for six CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopters for the U.S. Marine Corps. 

The Naval Air Systems Command awarded a $550.4 million contract modification to Sikorsky for Lot IV Low-Rate Initial Production of six CH-53Ks, according to an Oct. 26 Defense Department contract announcement. 

The contract modification also includes “associated aircraft, programmatic and logistics support, rate tooling and physical configuration audits.” 

The CH-53K is the Marine Corps’ heavy-lift replacement for the CH-53E Super Stallion. Designed to lift nearly 14 tons at a mission radius of 110 nautical miles, in Navy high/hot environments, the CH-53K is designed to lift triple the baseline CH-53E lift capability. The CH-53K will have an equivalent logistics shipboard footprint, lower operating costs per aircraft, and less direct maintenance man hours per flight hour.  

The Marine Corps has a requirement for 200 CH-53Ks. The work for the order is expected to be completed in July 2024.   

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Marine Corps has redesignated a squadron forward -deployed in Japan in preparation for its transition to the F-35B Lightning II strike fighter. The transition will result in the second F-35B squadron forward-deployed to Marine Aircraft Group 12 — a unit of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) — based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni.  

Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242 (VMFA(AW)-242 was re-designated Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 242 (VMFA-242) on Oct. 16, the 1st MAW said in an Oct. 23 release. 

VMFA-242 has been operating the F/A-18C/D Hornet from Iwakuni, and upon transition will be the second F-35B squadron based there. VMFA-121, the Corps’ first operational F-35B squadron, had been stationed at Iwakuni since January 2017. VMFA-121 has been deploying F-35Bs on board the amphibious assault ship USS America, which is home-ported in Sasebo, Japan.  

“The increased capability of F-35B, along with our other fifth-generation capabilities in III MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] enable us to support Fleet Marines, Joint and Allied partners on a moment’s notice,” said Brig. Gen. Chris McPhillips, the commanding general of 1st Marine Aircraft Wing headquartered in Okinawa, Japan. “F-35B gives us the ability to dominate air and sea space and persist wherever we are without rival. It is an expeditionary platform that literally holds doors open for the Fleet Marine and Joint Force. F-35B basing in Japan is not by accident, it has occurred here more rapidly than in other parts of the world, which is a testament to our commitment to Japan and the region.” 

ARLINGTON, VA. — An Oct. 15 ceremony marked the deactivation of Marine Attack Squadron 311 (VMA-311), an AV-8B Harrier II squadron at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma, Arizona, as the squadron shifted some assets to merge with sister squadron VMA-214.

VMA-311 will be re-activated in early 2022 as Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 311 (VMFA-311) at MCAS Miramar, California, to fly the F-35C Lightning II strike fighter, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said in an Oct. 16 release. 

VMA-311 “became the first Marine squadron to employ the AV-8B Harrier in combat during Operation Desert Shield,” the release said. “VMA-311’s Harriers were the first to fly combat missions in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and participated in the first combat sortie of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.” 

“The reputable Tomcats have an exceptional level of esprit de corps representing 78 years of superior performance,” said Sgt. Maj. Colin Barry, VMA-311 sergeant major, in the release. “The Tomcats imbued a level of morale within each other that was unmatched, but I have no doubt the newly adopted VMA-214 Black Sheep identity will be embraced, and they will continue performing remarkably.” 

The deactivation leaves VMA-214 as the only Harrier squadron left in Yuma-based Marine Aircraft Group 13. Three other Harrier attack squadrons ― VMA-223, VMA-231 and VMA-542 — are based at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, along with a replacement training squadron, VMAT-203. 

VMA-214 also will make the transition to the Lightning II, in this case the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing version. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Marine Corps has officially retired the Bell AH-1W “Super Cobra” from their ranks after 34 years of dependable service, Bell Textron, the helicopter’s builder, said in an Oct. 19 release.   

The last detachment of AH-1Ws to complete a deployment returned earlier this year with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The detachment, temporarily assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 365 (Reinforced), was part of Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 167 (HMLA-167), based at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina.  

The last AH-1W sortie was flown on Oct. 14 by HMLA-773 Detachment A at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, Louisiana. 

“Originally designated as the AH-1T+, the Super Cobra first flew on November 16, 1983 at Bell’s Flight Research Center in Arlington, Texas,” the release said. “Bell delivered the first AH-1Ws to the Marines on March 27, 1986 and delivered the final aircraft in 1999, for a domestic fleet of 179 attack helicopters. Through August 2020, the Marine Corps flew the Super Cobra for 933,614 hours.”     

The AH-1W served in numerous combat actions, including Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and in operations in Libya.   

“The AH-1W Super Cobra has served admirably and leaves a remarkable legacy of on-time, on-target attack helicopter support for our Marines,” said Col. David Walsh, the program manager for Light/Attack Helicopter Programs (PMA-276), in the release. “Although the AH-1W chapter is closing, the AH-1Z Viper stands ready with even greater capability to support our Marines for years to come.”   

“We are tremendously proud of the capabilities the AH-1W has brought to the United States Marines for the past 34 years,” said Michael Deslatte, H-1 Bell program manager. “The Super Cobra’s tremendous legacy is a testament to the excellence and dedication the men and women at Bell put into these platforms for generations and we look forward to continuing that legacy for years to come.”    

All HMLA squadrons are now equipped with the four-bladed AH-1Z Viper.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Assistant Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Gen. Gary Thomas, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus COVID-19, according to the Marine Corps.

Thomas, who tested positive Oct. 7, had been self-quarantining since Oct. 6, when he and several other senior military leaders were notified that Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Charles Ray had tested positive for COVID-19 a day earlier. Ray had attended meetings with them at the Pentagon the previous week. Some of the meeting attendees were members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said, adding that “all potential  close contacts from these meetings are self-quarantining.”

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger, a member of the Joint Chiefs, was away and did not attend the Pentagon meetings. Thomas, as assistant commandant, was there in his place.

Thomas was the first meeting attendee besides Ray to test positive. “In accordance with established Marine Corps COVID policies, Thomas, 58, will continue to quarantine at home. He is experiencing mild symptoms, but otherwise is feeling well,” according to a Marine Corps statement.

The Coast Guard issues a similar statement saying Ray would quarantine from home and “any Coast Guard personnel that were in close contact will also quarantine.”

As of Oct. 7, the latest Defense Department figures available, there have been 47,658 cases of COVID-19 among all the armed services, including: 17,803 in the Army; 10,585 for the Navy; 7,407 among the Air Force; 5,942 for the Marine Corps and 5,596 among the National Guard. There have been just eight COVID-related deaths among all the services. There were 10,751 total cases among civilian Defense Department employees, including 60 who died from the disease.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Unmanned aircraft maker AeroVironment has developed a bigger, badder version of Switchblade, its man-portable, tube-launched, loitering small aerial missile system.

The Switchblade 600 has greater capabilities for engaging larger, hardened targets with multi-purpose anti-armor ammunition at longer distances than the original Switchblade, now called Switchblade 300, AeroVironment officials said Oct. 1.

Both versions of small loitering missile, or loitering munition, are unmanned aerial vehicles designed to engage fixed and moving ground targets beyond line-of-sight with an explosive warhead. While launched from a tube like a mortar shell, they can “loiter” in the air for an extended period of time before striking, giving the operator time to decide when and what to attack.

Switchblade 600 comes with a patented “wave-off” feature that allows operators to abort the mission at any time if non-combatants are spotted too close to the target. If the situation changes, the feature allows operators to re-engage either the same target or others, avoiding collateral damage.

Larger than the back-packable 5.5-lb. (2.5 kg) Switchblade 300, the 600 model, weighing 50 lbs. (22.7 kg) is still considered to be portable and takes about eight minutes longer to set up than the two minutes for the smaller version. Both platforms are deployed via the launch tube in which they are transported. The new version has greater endurance, 40 minutes of flight time versus 15 minutes for the 300. It also comes with a high performance electro-optical/infrared gimbaled sensor suits, precision flight control and a touchscreen, tablet-based fire control system with the option to pilot the loitering missile manually or autonomously.

The $76 million contract awarded recently for Switchblade 300 procurement and support as part of the U.S. Army’s Lethal Miniature Aerial Missile System (LMAMS) program “is a testament to its battle-proven track record,” said Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment’s president and CEO. Since 2012, Switchblades have been fielded by the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command.

AeroVironment has been developing the Switchblade 600 with several Defense Department customers, said Brett Hush, senior general manager of Product Line Management for AeroVironment’s Tactical Missile Systems. “But the only one that we can talk about publicly at this point in time is the U.S. Marine Corps,” where AeroVironment is one of the competitors in a program that will hold a fly off in January to down select to a single supplier.

ARLINGTON, Va. — A Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II strike fighter collided with a Marine Corps KC-130J Super Hercules tanker/transport aircraft over Southern California on Sept. 29, resulting in the loss of the F-35B and a crash landing of the KC-130J.  

“At approximately 1600 [local time] it was reported that an F-35B made contact with a KC-130J during an air-to-air refueling evolution, resulting in the crash of the F-35B,” the Marine Corps said in a release. “The pilot of the F-35B ejected successfully and is currently being treated. The KC-130J is on deck in the vicinity of Thermal Airport. All crew members of the KC-130J have been reported safe.” 

A photo of the KC-130J published in the Palm Springs Desert News showed the KC-130J largely intact, having made a gear-up landing in a field in a carrot field in Thermal, California. The photo showed that the two starboard engines and external fuel tank had been heavily damaged. The F-35B crashed near Salton City, California. 

The KC-130J was assigned to Marine Aerial Refueler/Transport Squadron 352, based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California. The squadron of the F-35B was not announced.  

The F-35B crash is the second for the Marine Corps. An F-35B assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 based at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort crashed in 2018.  The Corps lost its first KC-130J in December 2018 in a mid-air collision during an aerial refueling with a Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet strike fighter off Japan. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The challenge a peer competitor like China poses in a future conflict across the Indo-Pacific region bears striking similarities to the war between the United States and Japan in the same battlespace more than 75 years ago, say two top Marine Corps planners.

Japan in 1941 was a near-peer adversary of the United States, with advanced technology, expansionist policies and a bullying attitude toward neighboring countries, says Major Gen. Gregg Olson, director of the Marine Corps Staff.  While the foes and times have changed “the concepts and realities of war in the vast distances that occur in the Pacific remain the same,” he added.

Like the Marines who landed on Guadalcanal in August 1942, today’s Marines will face the same sweeping distances, vulnerable supply lines, contested air, sea – and now cyber – space limitations, across a battlespace of scattered, remote islands of steaming jungle or barren volcanic rock. “That’s the framework for the next conflict,” Olson told the virtual Modern Day Marine Exposition Sept. 23.

Victory on Guadalcanal and the rest of the Pacific came “at the cost of capital ships and thousands of lives,” Olson noted. Another speaker at the conference, Major Gen. Paul Rock, director of Marine Corps  Strategies and Plans, said high casualties could be likely again. “Attrition is going to be a factor in a future fight,” Rock said.

While that may prove true, the Marines are not resigned to taking the same heavy casualties they suffered in the Pacific island-hopping campaign of World War II, Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, insisted a day later.

Others in and out of uniform have expressed concerns about casualty rates in an Asia-Pacific conflict given, China’s anti-access/aerial denial weapons platforms. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown told Military Times recently that war with a peer adversary could see “combat attrition rates and risks — that are more akin to the World War II era than the uncontested environment to which we have become accustomed.” Even Berger’s Force Design changes to meet the expected challenges of 2030, concedes there is no avoiding attrition. “In contingency operations against peer adversaries, we will lose aircraft, ships, ground tactical vehicles, and personnel,” it states, adding that force resilience – to absorb loss and continue to operate decisively – is critical.  

“No, we’re not resigned to high casualties, but we should not think that in a Great Power competition it’s going to be clean,” Berger said in livestreamed interview with Defense One on Sept. 24. Without mentioning China or Russia, Berger said neither side was “looking for a strength-on-strength fight, at all. We’re not looking for a fight, period.” Instead, Great Power adversaries will be using technology and other assets to target each other’s weaknesses to exploit them. Although there will be casualties “if it comes to a scrap,” he added.

The force in the Pacific will be distributed, Berger said, not to avoid creating an easy target for a knock-out blow – a tactical concern — but operationally, to be able to observe adversaries from every direction in every domain. That Berger said, also makes it very difficult for an adversary to focus their strengths.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The commandant of the Marine Corps said the Corps needs the Navy to broaden its family of amphibious warfare ships to create a more distributed, survivable force to operate in a future high-intensity conflict with a peer competitor.

Gen. David H. Berger, Sept. 24 speaking during an online interview by Defense One, said the three types of large amphibious warfare ships currently in the Navy’s fleet — the amphibious assault ship (LHA/LHD), amphibious transport dock ship (LPD), and dock landing ship (LSD) — “have done great for us in the way that we needed to operate so far. But that’s not the only way we’re going to need to operate going forward.”

Berger said that “those three families of pretty expensive, high-end ships are not enough. We need a more diverse family of ships in order to compete every day, in order to be ready for a crisis or conflict, hence the light amphibious warship [LAW].”

Berger is in the midst of redesigning the force structure of the Marine Corps with his Force Design 2030 plan to meet the challenges of future potential conflict with powers such as China.

“We know we need something that’s smaller, that doesn’t have as much draft, that can move us around from ship to shore or shore to shore over great distances, but is affordable,” the commandant said. “Whatever that turns out to be, it will broaden the portfolio and give us more tools. I need to give commanders the means, the mobility to move in a distributed operating environment. The [LAW], what ever that turns out to be, is part of that.

Berger noted that, “so far, within the Navy, within the Department of Defense, every single wargame for the past five months has borne that out. If you don’t have that, they’re going to know how you are moving around and you’re easier to target. We’ve got to make it hard [for the enemy to target].”

The general said commanders “have to distribute the force first of all to give the adversary a lot of looks from a lot of different directions in every single domain. You make it very difficult for them to focus their strengths.”

Berger also pointed out that medical facilities will need to be brought more forward in a high-intensity conflict to care for casualties. He also said protection of logistics and of command and control, which long have been taken for granted in the wars that the United States has fought over several decades, can no longer be taken for granted.