Logistics Vehicle System (LVS)
In the category of cross-country heavy military trucks, the Oshkosh Corporation of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, despite stingy and uncertain budgets and extremely stringent requirements, has engineered a line of world-class vehicles. For the Corps, Oshkosh has adapted the Army's HEMTT family of ten-ton 8x8 trucks to produce a transporter good enough for Marines. Known as the Logistics Vehicle System (LVS), it provides the heavy lift capability for expeditionary Marine units. The LVS consists of two units, a standard Mk 48 Front Power Unit (FPU), and a variety of specialized trailers or Rear Power Units (RPUs). The FPU can be attached to any RPU through an articulation joint to produce a flexible 8x8 vehicle. The FPU has a 445-hp liquid-cooled, turbocharged diesel engine. The spacious and fully enclosed cab seats two drivers and provides exceptional visibility. The FPU is 8 ft/2.4 m wide and 8.5 ft/2.6 m high at the roofline, and weighs 12.65 tons/11,470 kg unloaded.
The LVS is equipped with a four-speed automatic transmission, and the vehicle can ford water up to 5 ft/1.53 m deep without special preparations. The fuel tanks hold 150 gal/568 L, providing a nominal range of 450 mi/725 km. The RPUs include cargo trailer, wrecker, crane, and ribbon-bridge variants. The LVS family of vehicles are a critical link in the supply chain that moves bulk fuel, ammunition, and supplies from the beachhead or landing area to the forward combat elements of the landing force. The Marine Corps operates 1,584 of these useful transports, assigned to special combat service support motor transport units. A deployed MEU (SOC) would normally have at least two of these trucks, assigned as diesel fuel carriers.
Marine Corps Aviation
Marine aviation has always had two goals. The first is to support Marines on the ground, and the second is to remain expeditionary, which is another word for mobile and deployable. Today, the Corps deploys one of the most unusual and focused air forces in the world. Its aircraft have been specially selected to support the Marine mission, and this has put the Marines frequently at odds with the leadership of both the nation and the other services. In these conflicts, the Marines have usually won out in the end. In the 1970s, the Administration of President Jimmy Carter killed — several times in fact — the AV-8B Harrier II and CH-53E Super Stallion programs, claiming that they were not necessary or useful. Luckily, the Corps has an awesome Congressional lobby, and was able to sustain the programs until the coming of the 1980s and President Ronald W. Reagan. Today the Marines are winning another battle with the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor medium transport aircraft, which then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney actually canceled back in 1989. No matter how you look at it, when Marines see something they really want, they will do what is necessary to get it.
McDonnell Douglas/British Aerospace AV-8B Harrier II
Harriers are a species of marsh hawk native to the British Isles that preys on rodents and small reptiles. Not a bad description of the tactical role of this unique British-designed and internationally built aircraft that is now in service with the U.S. Marine Corps. In the 1950s, Sir Sidney Camm of the Hawker Aircraft Company (already a well- respected British aircraft designer) began sketching ideas for a jet plane capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The British Government, believing that guided missiles would soon make the manned fighter aircraft obsolete, showed little interest; but the company invested its own funds to build a prototype, the P.1127, which made its first flight on November 19th, 1960, after a series of tethered hovering tests.
Over the years, designers and engineers have proposed many bizarre solutions to the VTOL problem, but the P.1127 used one of the oddest solutions yet, and it proved to be a winner. The key is the Pegasus engine (designed by Dr. Stanley Hooker of the Bristol-Siddeley Engine Company), a turbofan without a tailpipe. The jet exhaust is vented through an array of four nozzles that swivel through an angle of more than 90deg. The concept is called 'vectored thrust.' Point the nozzles straight down, and the plane goes straight up. Point the nozzles aft and the plane zooms off into level flight. To land, reverse the sequence. Sir Sidney observed that, kinetically speaking, it was easier to stop and then land than to land and then try to stop. He was right. Tactically, a VTOL aircraft does not require a ten-thousand foot concrete runway; it can operate from a parking lot, a clearing in the woods, or even a tennis court (if you take down the net). During the Cold War on NATO's Central Front, a Soviet surprise attack might have knocked out most of the concrete runways on Day One, but a force of VTOL fighters, well dispersed and hidden, could have carried on the fight, waging a kind of aerial guerrilla warfare.
The test successes of the P.1127 led to an order in the early 1960s from the Ministry of Aviation for an evaluation unit of nine improved aircraft, under the type designation Kestrel FGA.1 (Fighter, Ground Attack). Pilots from the Royal Air Force (RAF), the U.S. Navy and Air Force (six were shipped to the Navy's flight test center at Patuxent River, Maryland, for evaluation), and the new West German Luftwaffe were invited to test-fly the Kestrel. In February 1965, the RAF ordered the first pre-production batch of VTOL fighters, under the name Harrier, and on August 31st, 1965, the new aircraft made its first flight. (Hawker Siddeley was eventually merged into British Aerospace, while Rolls-Royce took over Pegasus engine production.)
For U.S. naval aviators, wedded to their big deck aircraft carriers, the poky little Harrier (no radar, no afterburner, and look at that cramped cockpit!) was unimpressive in comparison with their mighty new supersonic McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs. But for USMC pilots, traditionally committed to delivering close air support that flies really, really close, it was love at first sight. There is a legendary story of how two Marine officers quietly went to the 1969 Paris Air Show (with the backing of the Corps leadership), walked up to the British Aerospace chalet, and told the British representative, 'We're here to fly the Harrier!' The rest is history. With the enthusiastic support of the Commandant, the Marines used their considerable political clout to win budget approval for the purchase of a dozen Harriers, modified to carry the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, and designated AV-8A. By 1977, the force had grown to a total of 110 Harriers, including eight TAV-8A two-seat trainers, equipping four attack squadrons of Marine Air Group (MAG) 32 based at Cherry Point, North Carolina (VMA-223, VMA-231, VMA-542, and VMAT-203). In 1972, the first Harrier detachment went to sea, aboard the USS
One of the lessons learned from the early Harriers was that vertical takeoff was usually both wasteful and unnecessary. A short horizontal takeoff roll saved a great deal of fuel, made it possible to carry a greater payload, and greatly eased the tricky transition from vertical to horizontal flight. In military organizations, every new concept generates a new acronym; hence STOVL, 'Short Takeoff, Vertical Landing.' For their second-generation Sea Harriers, the British further refined this technique with the development of the 'ski jump.' Providing an inclined ramp at the bow of a ship, or the end of an expeditionary airfield, gave the aircraft an extra 'kick' at the moment of takeoff, and placed it in a safer nose-high attitude in the event of an engine flameout. During the South Atlantic war of 1982, both RAF Harriers and Royal Navy Sea Harriers proved the validity of the concept under difficult combat conditions.
