"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"puttster" wrote in message
om...
Chad Irby wrote in message
. com...
In article ,
(puttster) wrote:

Then let me ask why the Marines need the V/Stol capability. I cannot
get a good picture of a mission where the marines would need 400+ of
them with all the support for them but still not have a decent runway!

Why are you limiting the situation to needing 400+ at once?

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?


By ship , C-130 or other battlefield airlift asset.

Keith

I might could buy resupply with C-130's . They are STOL themselves,
landing fully loaded in under 500 ft. We would need a lot of them
though, to set up a deep mission. Maybe a situation like OIF where
Turkey would not let the Army come in from the north. With enough
C-130's maybe you could quickly set up a wing of F-35B's up in
Kurdistan, with a regiment of Marines to support them.

The thing is though there were usable airstrips there already. Even
if there weren't any, the first C-130's should be bringing in the
runway, then you could bring in C-5's for supply and you could build
twice the force in the same amount of time. Any your fighters could
have normal range and loads.

f-35B's seem like an Idea without a mission to me. Well, maybe some
isolated rescue stuff, but what do the marines need 400 of them for?
I could see two dozen maybe, to go along with their Ospreys. That
should be it.