Chad, these are the reasons given, but to me do not add up. The
Osprey is primarily a troop carrier, it will bring 24 marines on one
trip and spend the next 5 supplying them. Inbetween it can carry
10,000 lbs for the air wing, but that is barely enough for gas for a
single F-35 mission. Who will bring the bombs, the operations and
maintenance crews (and their food, and the cooks) and flight control
people, the artillery, the barbed wire, the hooches, the field
hospitals... And if we did have the capability to build up an air wing
and a Brigade of marines deep into the land mass, well why couldn't we
just bring in some steel planking while we aere at it and build a
runway and bring in some serious cargo and F-35 A's? Wouldn't that be
a faster solution than VSTOLing everything?

Chad Irby wrote in message . com...
In article ,
(puttster) wrote:

Chad Irby wrote in message
. com...

The situation is more like "we need a dozen for this small brushfire war
in a place where there are no good airstrips," or we need to put a small
landing force in at this area, and the bad guys have a few planes, so we
need a little fighter cover from the LHDs."

If there are no good airstrips how would the marines get their gas,
bombs, food, and all the other support?

See the other posts in this thread about the V-22 Osprey, or read up on
parachure sropping/resupply. You also have a lot of situations where
the Marines would have a forward location, a few hundred miles outside
of the range of carrier jets, but still accessible from the ground.

It's also nice to have fast-reaction fighter jets that don't have to
live on a big, obvious target like an airfeld.