The host country would have to approve the plan, of course. To keep things simple, the leapfrogging Marines wouldn’t even plug into the F-35’s centralized Autonomic Logistics Information System, O’Brien said. Say, in The Philippines or Malaysia or on some Japanese island.Īny location with 6,000 feet of clean runway is a candidate, O’Brien and Kiely said. That means putting in practice a distributed “hub-and-spoke” concept, whereby squadrons leave their heaviest equipment at some big air base-Williamtown, for instance-and stage a few maintainers, some weapons and a little gas at austere airfields closer to the front lines.
It’s rehearsing a largely tanker-free war. The Marine-Aussie team, despite some local support from USMC KC-130 and RAAF KC-30 tankers, made its choice by opting to deploy light and fast. “This is all a time-distance-fuel problem,” O’Brien said. or leapfrog from one small island base to the next. An F-35 squadron fighting in the Western Pacific has two options: refuel in mid-air a lot. From there, it’s 500 miles to Taiwan, the likeliest locus of a major war in the region.Īn F-35A ranges just 650 miles, there then back, with full tanks and a few missiles. It’s another 2,200 miles from Darwin to the northern Philippines. It’s 1,800 miles from Williamtown to Darwin, Australia’s northernmost fighter base. military fighter deployments in the Asia-Pacific region.īut the same lightness that allows the Marines to move fast and on short notice also constrains their operations once they arrive. The Marines often deploy without attached Air Force tankers and cargo planes, which are in high demand and short supply and largely dictate the pace of U.S. “Kenny has been great helping us out,” O’Brien said, referring to Kiely by his callsign. 3 Squadron with its 10 F-35s was the logical host. To fight the hardest, a deploying squadron either must bring parts with it, or fall in a stash of spares at the overseas location. The F-35 is a complex and maintenance-hungry machine. “What we bring is manpower and firepower and aggressiveness, but we don’t necessarily bring the parts tail,” O’Brien said.
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