Back in 2000 during the Great Harrier Red Stripe, a MEU floated without Harriers much to the horror of the MAGTF kool-aid guzzlers.
I was on that MEU as the Asst Air Officer.
Amazingly the MEU sailed and enjoyed a successful deployment - and probably enjoyed the smoothest running deck of any MEU in recent history.
Not so much. It was a standard "pre-9/11" float. We got to the Gulf to do 3 exercises and OSW. Couldn't do OSW because we had no FW. Couldn't do hardly any FW CAS during the exercises because we had no FW. Part of my job was to rustle up FW air for the exercises. The air force at AJ flat out told me to go pound sand. So did (embarrassingly enough) VMFA(AW)-121 at AJ. Nobody thought it was a good idea for the Kuwaitis to do anything more than sim-CAS (and I still believe that), so that left me with the USN.
To their credit, they did all that they could do. The fine folks at CAG-9 on the Stennis busted their butts to give us every spare sortie that they could muster. That wasn't much, but it wasn't for a lack of effort on their part. It was all a personality driven drug deal setup that got us any CAS at all. That's not a very good template for future success. And for the record, it was just as many USN dudes as it was VMFA-314 that did it.
Oh, and the deck was every bit as assed up as it ever was. Taking the Harriers off did not make Combat Cargo any smarter or the Phrog bubbas any better at planning the deck.
Best deck flow ever: USS Bataan in 2003.
The doctrine writers were rightfully scared that the MEU wouldn't even miss having the big guns along because that would validate the argument that Harriers didn't belong in the ACE to begin with.
I'm not sure I buy this. I don't think that anybody wants to avoid the HMM ACE anymore than I do, but the Corps wants a packaged deal under the MEU CO. They're not going to bend on that one unless FW air is pried from their cold dead fingers. It's about ownership and the ability to task/provide assets autonomously.
The bitch of it is, if you argue FW out of the MEU ACE there's not much argument left to keep any FW attack capability in the Corps at all. Arguably Joint Doctrine should be sufficiently evolved that should the MEU need FW AI or CAS, there's a purple asset suitably trained and operationally capable (AF long range assets or CV) available to support. You could go a step further and argue that if the MEU needs that "caliber" of support, the engagement is large enough that there are probably suitable assets already positioned nearby.
Again, I tend to disagree. We had FW aviation for decades before the mighty jump jet came along. We did just fine. We just traded the fixed basing costs to a cost of supporting V/STOL. We could always go back. The idea of just embedding a squadron (or a few) of FW on a CV "in case we need it" is a fallacy. Once those squadrons go to the CV, the CAG owns them. Whether we ever get to use them again is up to the CAG and MEU CO to wrestle with together. Maybe it'll work (like it did for me that float). Maybe not. It'll be largely personality dependent unless a large paradigm shift is made to give the USMC a larger role in the tasking of it's assets.
Don't get me wrong, I love the legacy of Marine Corps FW attack and STOVL ops/capability. But if circumstances/resources don't allow for the continuation of that legacy there will have to be a paradigm shift. Strip STOVL out of the MEU and backfill with AHs to max capacity - my money says the MEU will not notice any loss of capability.
"Any loss of capability"? Totally disagree. You lose any deep strike capability, A/A capability, and the ability to shape the battlefield beyond about 100NM. Is that too much of a loss? I don't know. But it's definitley a loss.
**For anyone unfamiliar, I'm a previous Harrier guy and a previous FAC. You may disagree with my assessment but my thoughts/arguments are not without basis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah......you've turned over to the Dark Side. You lost your "basis" when you started ironing your flight suit and wearing a scarf. <-----insert little smiley thing here