National Security is Everyone's Business

April 16th, 2024 | 12:36 PM ET

Land, Sea, and Air: U.S. Military Readiness in the Navy and Marine Corps

Posted: January 5th, 2017

The crash of a MV-22B off of Okinawa on December 13, 2016 occurred during one of the most difficult tasks a Marine aviator can do in peacetime: night time midair refueling. While the Marine Corps will not release more details until an investigation is complete, this episode, and another involving an F/A-18 where the pilot was killed, have many wondering if Marine aviators are getting enough flight time.

This is indicative of a greater problem faced by all branches of the military: sustained deployments and trimmed budgets originating with the 2013 sequester mean less time and resources for training and future planning. Overtime, this undermines the readiness of the armed forces and is felt by each military branch in different ways. In this feature, The Cipher Brief examines the state of readiness in the United States Marine Corps and Navy as we recently did for the Army and Air Force.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:InternationalTagged with:

Related Articles

How Safe Would We Be Without Section 702?

SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — A provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has generated controversy around fears of the potential for abuse has proven to be crucial […] More

June 1st, 2023

Search

Close