Posts Tagged ‘ marine-corps ’

The commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Sacramento has been temporarily relieved of duty, five months after several crewmen died in a collision between one of the station’s aircraft and a Marine Corps helicopter.

Link:
Coast Guard Removes Ca. Station Commander

A key lawmaker said Tuesday that strains on equipment and people are causing declining readiness in the Navy and Air Force, while the Army and Marine Corps are keeping pace only through a reliance on emergency war funding to cover the cost of repairing or replacing vital equipment. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, said that if war funding dries up — and he expects it will — the Army and Marine Corps will miss a 2013 deadline for restoring prepositioned stockpiles and resetting equipment. “My fear is that budgetary pressures and other priorities will continue to drive that timeline further to the right,” Ortiz said of the 2013 deadline to fully restore force readiness. Immediate problems for the Navy and Air Force involve a variety of budget contraints that include underfunding of ship maintenance and flight hours for both services, as well as in funds for aviation spare parts, Ortiz said. The shortages are occurring even though the 2011 defense budget request includes $283.1 billion for operations and maintenance accounts, a $17.8 billion increase over current spending.

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These captains were selected for promotion to the permanent grade of rear admiral (lower half). Selectees are listed with current duty. • Chaplain Corps: Gregory Horn, deputy chaplain, Marine Corps Reserve Matters, U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters, Arlington, Va. • Civil Engineer Corps: Paula Brown, deputy chief of staff for engineering, U.S. Naval Forces Korea. • Medical Corps: Charles Harr, commanding officer for Medical Battalion, Marine Forces Reserve Headquarters, New Orleans. • Medical Service Corps: Thomas Beeman, deputy chief of staff, reserve component for wounded, ill, and injured, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Washington, D.C. • Nurse Corps: Margaret Rykowski, Fleet Surgeon, 3rd Fleet, San Diego.

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Reserve O-7 staff selections

Naval Air Systems Command grounded 104 Navy and Marine F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets Friday after inspectors discovered the airframes were developing cracks much earlier than engineers had thought. The grounding order affects the first four varieties of Hornet — models A through D — and does not apply to aircraft now flying combat missions over Iraq or Afghanistan. The number of Hornets affected makes up 16 percent of the Navy-Marine A through D fleet. There have been no crashes or other mishaps related to the problem, said Navy spokesman Lt. Nate Christensen. The crash Wednesday of a Marine F/A-18D Hornet from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 224 off South Carolina — in which both the pilot and weapons officer were rescued — was not related to this problem, he said. Of the 104 grounded jets, 77 are in flight status. Of those, 23 are in Navy and Marine Corps fleet squadrons; five are forward-deployed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan; five belong to the Blue Angels flight demonstration team; and 44 are in fleet replacement squadrons. The other 27 Hornets are in a maintenance status. The grounding notice from NavAir covered a “high stress focus area” that engineers already knew about as part of the Hornets’ service-life assessment program, Christensen said, so NavAir issued a set of instructions for affected aircraft. Squadrons have been ordered to perform a magnetic field inspection on jets included in the grounding. If they don’t find cracks, their Hornets go back to unrestricted flight status, although crews are required to visually inspect the wings after every 100 hours of flight. If a squadron can’t do the magnetic inspection on a jet included in the grounding, its crews have been ordered to inspect its wings visually. Even if they find no cracks, the Hornet pilots will not be allowed to pull more than four Gs during flight. Christensen said most of the problems had been reported on C and D model Hornets across the Navy and Marine Corps, although there was a potential for cracks on all versions of the jet. He said cracking was taking place at the “aft wing shear attach fitting” — approximately the seam where part of a Hornet’s wing joins to the fuselage. There are a total of 635 A- through D-model jets in the Navy and Marine Corps fleet.

Read the original: 104 Hornets grounded after cracks discovered

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A new medical clinic will be named in honor of a Navy Corpsman who was killed in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command will dedicate the clinic to Hospital Corpsman Second Class Charles “Luke” Milam during a ceremony at Camp Lejeune on Friday. The clinic is one of only two medical facilities owned and operated exclusively by the Marine Corps. Milam was killed in 2007 in Helmand Province during an attack on a Taliban stronghold. It was his fourth combat deployment.

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NC Marines dedicate clinic to slain corpsman

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, S.C. — A Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot and his weapons officer tried to make it back home after both engines on their warplane failed and a fire broke out, but they were forced to eject and ditch the aircraft in the ocean, a spokesman said Thursday. “The fire was making its way toward the cockpit, so they determined they could not make it back and they were forced to eject,” said Marine Corps spokesman Gunnery Sgt. Chad McMeen. The accident Wednesday ended safely when the two pilots were plucked from a survival raft by a Coast Guard search and rescue crew from Charleston, McMeen said. “It really was a miracle. They were back on land within about two hours of the incident,” McMeen said. Neither man suffered serious injuries, but they were sent for medical evaluations as a precaution, McMeen said. The names of the Marines were being withheld while they contact their families. An investigation will begin into why the $29 million fighter jet suffered the engine failures. McMeen said the Marines detected a problem while they were conducting a training mission about 60 miles off shore. The aircraft hit the water about 35 miles off the coast of St. Helena Sound, north of Beaufort. A Coast Guard cutter has been patrolling the crash site to help locate and recover pieces of the plane, he said. Related reading • 2 Marine pilots rescued; SC crash probed

View original post here: Corps says fire forced pilots to ditch Hornet

The Pentagon will resume the stalled My Career Advancement Accounts spouse education benefit program as of noon Saturday, restoring tuition benefits to 136,583 military spouses who had applied for and been enrolled in the program. However, the MyCAA program will not accept new applicants at this point, Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan said Thursday. “This is the first step of how the department is going to address this program.” Whether new applicants will be accepted at some point “remains to be seen,” Lapan said, adding that the Pentagon comptroller “is working hard to fund this program.” The program provides up to $6,000 in tuition assistance to spouses for a variety of educational programs. Tuition payments were abruptly halted Feb. 16 “due to overwhelming demand,” Lapan said. Military spouses found out about the shutdown just as they tried to request funding for classes that were to start within a month. They could not request payment for classes for which they had already registered.

Read the original here: DoD to restart stalled spouse tuition program

Two Marine Corps fighter pilots have been rescued from the ocean off South Carolina after their aircraft went down.

Originally posted here:
Marine Hornet Pilots Rescued Off Coast

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Marine Corps is trying to determine why a fighter jet suffered engine failures, crashing into the ocean off South Carolina and forcing the pilots to bail out. Officials at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort say neither the pilot nor the weapons officer on the F/A-18D Hornet suffered serious injuries when they ejected late Wednesday afternoon about 35 miles offshore. The Marines' names were not released. They were picked up by a Coast Guard helicopter about an hour after the plane went down and were checked by a doctor as a precaution. A Marines spokesman says a Coast Guard cutter was patrolling the crash site late Wednesday to help locate and recover pieces of the plane. The plane was on a training mission when the two engines on the $29 million jet failed.

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2 Marine pilots rescued; SC crash probed

U.S. military units in Iraq and Afghanistan advising host-nation security forces can still project combat power, Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Mattis: Future Units Need Balanced Capabilities