The Flyer

Lt. Gen. Michael Hough envisions a future family of tiltrotor craft and seeks a squadron of high-speed UAVs operated by just six Marines

As the Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Aviation, Lt. Gen. Michael Hough is struggling to keep the Marines’ aging aircraft aloft amid a war while he phases in new planes and helicopters and seeks revolutionary aircraft to fulfill the service’s aviation requirements for the next three decades.

Most of those requirements are for rotary-wing craft. “We’ve put a lot of money against fixed-wing airplanes, but we haven’t done that with helicopters,” he said. Hough wants “big aircraft” that can work in heat and high altitudes, carrying large payloads and supporting dispersed operations. The Marines also need a tiltrotor unmanned aircraft “that flies at over 200 knots” and can perform as an escort for the MV-22 Osprey.

Meanwhile, Hough is managing a transformation in Marine aviation. The Osprey hovers between evaluation and operations; F/A-18 Hornet squadrons are integrating with the Navy’s units; the Corps’ EA-6B Prowlers — venerable electronic warfare platforms for more than 20 years — face retirement; and the Joint Strike Fighter program is well under way, with first flight of a vertical takeoff and landing variant set for 2007.

Hough has been commander of Marine Aircraft Group 24, chief of the Navy’s expeditionary warfare programs and director of the Joint Strike Fighter Program. A 42-year veteran of the Marine Corps, he retires in December. At his office in the Pentagon, Hough discussed aviation issues with Seapower Correspondent Patricia Kime.

What are the top priorities for Marine Corps aviation?

HOUGH: The highest priority is the war. The Marines have a tremendous amount of people over there, including about 25 to 28 percent of our airplanes, and we are working them day in and day out. My highest priority is keeping the machinery going, and keeping the machine going.

No. 2 is to make sure the initial operational capability (IOC) dates for the new equipment are on track. Everything I have is so old, it’s incredible. I can keep them going for now, but we can’t have huge swings in the IOCs. Right now, they’re on track. Some people may question it, but they are.

Another priority is focusing on this rotary wing-centric environment we operate in. Fixed-wing is important; we need precision bombing in an urban environment but the kind of war we’re fighting here, the bottom line is, it’s rotary-centric. Supplies, troop insert, medevac — all are rotary-centric. We’ve put a lot of money against fixed-wing airplanes but we haven’t done that with helicopters. Yet all of sudden, we need big aircraft that can go over 11,000-foot mountains in the heat, carrying loads and supporting dispersed operations. The role of the helicopter has never been more important than it is now. We need to make them more survivable and more efficient in the dirt and grime.

Finally, logistics is important. We need to get into performance-based logistics, like, say, your car. Cars don’t break down any more. But if they do, you take them to a dealer and they fix it. The same thing should happen here. We need to have reliable equipment, and if it does break, it should go back to the shop.

How is the tactical air integration of Navy and Marine Corps units doing?

HOUGH: The Navy and Marine Corps have become much more efficient in sharing the TACAIR (tactical aircraft) role. I think [acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R.] England is now looking at joint TACAIR integration, looking at the Air Force and everybody else, putting things together so we don’t have stovepipe capability, we have integrated capability where the whole is more powerful than the sum of its parts.

Has the Marine Corps decided how many vertical liftoff and carrier-based Joint Strike Fighters it will need?

HOUGH: The British are, once again, showing us how to do carriers. The Brits are moving to smaller carriers, faster carriers, with 1,000 guys versus 6,000 guys [in U.S. carriers]. They can carry 40 jets. And if you need to go ashore, those 40 jets can be jump jets, and you just move them ashore. That’s what you call efficiency.

What will replace the Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicles and the CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters?

HOUGH: In terms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), we know what we want. Right now, a Pioneer squadron is five aircraft and 192 guys. There are 12 airplanes in an F/A-18 squadron and about 160 people. Think about it. I need a UAV that flies over 200 knots and flies a long way. I want interoperability, a modular sensor package and a 300-pound payload. I want something that flies like an airplane and lands like a helicopter, and I only want six guys to fix it — the same six guys that will fly it, control it and send the information along. Until there’s another UAV that can do all that, Eagle Eye [being developed by the Coast Guard] seems to be that airplane.

As for the CH-53E [heavy-lift helicopter], it’s the most important aircraft for ship-to-objective maneuver. It can carry 27,500 pounds for 110 miles. I need that kind of capability. But I want a stronger [gear] box, I want a new blade, I want a redesign of the transmission and a [rotor] head that doesn’t break. I also want a glass cockpit and a motor that can stay in the craft for 1,000 hours.

Basically, we’re going to get a new airplane, the CH-53X. It will look the same, but it will be a phenomenal piece of machinery. The Defense Acquisition Board was scheduled for the end of October.

What lies ahead as a replacement for the Huey utility and Cobra attack helicopters?

HOUGH: [Upgraded versions of those aircraft] are going to the operations evaluation by the end of the year, but they are a bridge to the escort of the future. The Osprey needs an escort, and the Cobra is not going to be able to keep up. With the tiltrotor, I envision a family of aircraft, including the UAV, a small escort — a Cobra-type aircraft that is a tiltrotor — the Osprey, and a joint heavy lift aircraft with four tiltrotor blades that can meet a 50,000-pound lift requirement. The tiltrotor has huge potential. In the meantime, I can see the UAV serving as an escort for the MV-22 Osprey, with the information being beamed straight to the MV-22, so it doesn’t have to be surprised by jumping into a hornets’ nest someplace.

The EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes are being retired and the Corps has no similar aircraft in the pipeline. Does the Marine Corps plan to relinquish the electronic warfare mission, relying on the Navy and its EA-6Bs or their replacement?

HOUGH: We are currently looking at the Joint Strike Fighter to take a role in electronics warfare. We’re not getting rid of the mission, we’re just going to do it differently, in a more passive way. Instead of having a standoff jammer, we’re going to get into a guy’s OODA (observation, orientation, decision, action) loop with the same end results. We’ve got stealth; we’ve got insight. And the airplane is very smart. We’ll be refining some things, but this is a flexible multimission aircraft and we can do a lot of things with it. Besides, I want to be out of the EA-6B business by 2014 or 2015.

What are your greatest challenges as deputy commandant for aviation?

HOUGH: I was in the gym one day, and this old guy, about 75, comes over and says, “You don’t know me, but I know you. Your legacy is going to be that you killed a bunch of Marines and then lied about it.” This was at 5 o’clock in the morning. I’ll never forget it. We got a hell of a reprieve, a second chance, after the crash. [The April 8, 2000, crash of an MV-22 Osprey near Tucson, Ariz., killed 19 Marines. A second crash occurred Dec. 11, 2000, in Jacksonville, N.C., killing four Marines.]

We flew the operations evaluation over again. We did everything Congress wanted us to do, and we did it on a moderate schedule. We explored the tiltrotor physics, and, once we modeled it, we made the airplane fly just like the simulator. We took it one step at a time, and now it works. People were skeptical, but it works and it works well. Now the main thing is don’t get complacent. We should never be complacent.

How are sensors such as Litening making a difference in Iraq and Afghanistan?

HOUGH: It used to be that one out of every four aircraft had a third-generation FLIR (Litening Advanced Targeting System). Now every fixed-wing in Iraq has a Litening pod. And everyone should have one. If the targeting information goes into that pod, that pod immediately slews on that target. Up on that pilot’s scope, he’s seeing everything the Marines on the ground are seeing, and there’s the target. Boom, it’s gone. No one has to say a word. It’s instantaneous.