Mr. Lee,
You do not know how Marines think nor the actual history the Hornets in Naval aviation.
The Marine Corps looked at the E/F and decided to keep updating our Hornets, to include aggressive SDLM cycles. The stupidity of “growing” the Hornet in size to do the mission of the Tomcat (big engine variant) seemed evident. Actually we wanted a legacy variant that had VG intakes, two D nozzles, and over 22K of thrust a side but…
The navy let their legacy Hornets de-grade, lack of updates and SDLM cycles, putting the money into E/F/G issues.
Starting 10-12 years ago the navy complained that couldn’t make their deployments. They were the 1st service to de-establish reserve squadrons and give the jets to the AD component. Then all but one Marine reserve was ordered de-established to give the AD navy newer more capable jets with more upgrades than any of the AD navy jets. Next it was whole squadrons of jets swapped, Marines getting clapped out, non-upgraded jets numbers not even flyable while the navy rec’d FMC jets.
The navy won in keeping their squadrons deploying vice the Marine solution of sending additional Marine squadrons. The navy won in papering over problems in the E/F/G program. Not nearly the first time and probably not the last time that navy aviation has covered up screw-ups at the expense of the Marine Corps and in my opinion the USA as a whole.
Actual historical facts are the USMC planned for, and executed, life extension programs. The upgraded A-D (22.5K per side thrust, VG intakes, two d nozzles, electronics) was seen as a threat to the E-F and told NFW and STFU.
The error in your procurement is that congress appropriates money to Marine aviation but is managed by DON. NAVAIR re-programs Hornet money at will with little oversight.
S/F, FOG
Last edited by FOG; 5th Mar 2017 at 20:01.