Riding on Air : Navy, Marine Corps Staying High on High-Tech Assault Vehicle

If the Marines are ever again called upon to hit the beach, it’s a good bet that some of them and a great deal of their heavy firepower will arrive on high-tech hovercraft now stationed at Camp Pendleton.

First publicly unveiled in 1985, the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) program remains the pride of the Navy and Marine amphibious forces despite design problems that could have scuttled production, a 21% cost increase, and criticism by military analysts who called the craft an impractical and unneeded “wonder weapon.”

The military has been so bullish on the LCAC that when the prototype rolled out in the mid-1980s, top brass praised it as an innovation in amphibious warfare rivaled only by the advent of the helicopter.

Riding on an inflated air bag and powered by four gas-turbine engines, the craft is five times as fast (top speed: 50 knots) as its World War II-era predecessor, which is still the workhorse of the fleet.

Can Carry Big Load

The Landing Craft Air Cushion can carry 70 tons of equipment and 26 Marines, land on rocky or steep shores or in high-surf conditions that would thwart other landing craft, and then continue inland for up to 20 miles.

Its purpose is twofold: allowing assaults to be launched from further out at sea to avoid detection, and opening up more beach area for possible assaults, thus keeping an adversary off guard.

By 1995, the Navy, which operates the craft, plans to have 45 at Camp Pendleton and 45 at Little Creek, Va. At an estimated cost of $28 million each, the 90 craft have a price tag, including money spent on research and development, of about $2.5 billion.

The LCAC program is an indication of how the Marine Corps--as compared to the other branches of the armed services--is increasingly geared toward possible conflicts in the Third World rather than sustained warfare with the Soviet Union.

Friends and critics of the LCAC alike agree that with its speed and stealth, it is more likely to be vital in skirmishes against a Third World adversary or Soviet surrogate.

The Soviets, along with being buffered by a land mass, possess the detection devices and ability to strike back immediately that would make an assault by sea far less likely to succeed, analysts say.

“The LCAC is definitely a Third World-style vehicle,” said retired Marine Lt. Col. John Buchanan, senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

“If we use an LCAC to invade the Soviet Union through Norway, Turkey, Greece or the Baltic, the nuclear weapons will be flying before the Marines hit the beach,” he added. “But a Third World force won’t have that kind of capability and could still be surprised and immobilized by an LCAC-assisted landing.”

The official Marine Corps position is that Marines are prepared to fight in any conflict where U.S. interests are at stake--including as a part of NATO forces in Europe.

But Navy and Marine officers trained for amphibious warfare--which by federal law is the major mission given to the Marine Corps--acknowledged that there are far more theoretical “scenarios” where the craft would respond to a “low-intensity conflict” rather than a direct confrontation with the Soviets.

“There is a much greater chance we’ll be needed in a Grenada or something like that,” said Lt. Col. Burton C. Quist, commanding officer of a 1,100-man battalion that returned to Camp Pendleton last week from six months of training in the Western Pacific.

One of the major goals of the six-month “float” was to test the landing craft in mock landings in Korea, Guam, the island of Tinian, and Subic Bay in the Philippines. It was only the second sustained test at sea for the craft.

Not surprisingly, Quist said, an LCAC-assisted amphibious Marine force is the ideal U.S. military response to brush-fire wars, compared to having bases and troops on foreign soil.

“You put amphibious forces out there and you don’t have to worry about basing rights or overfly rights or demonstrators at the main gate of the base,” Quist said. “If you are out there with enough men and equipment, you can land quickly and nip something in the bud that might otherwise get bigger.”

‘Weight and Muscle’

“Someone has to have enough weight and muscle to kick in the door,” agreed Marine Capt. Jerome M. Lynes, the battalion’s assistant operations officer.

The Landing Craft Air Cushion, Lynes noted, will also enhance the ability of the Marines to launch “special operations”--that is, small raiding parties either to capture a specific target or as a precursor to a larger assault.

“The LCAC will allow the introduction of a raiding force even more clandestinely than in the past,” Lynes said. “An LCAC can start from an amphibious force 100 to 150 miles out at sea and quickly close to within 15 or 20 miles of the beach, where the rubber boats can be launched silently and under cover of darkness.”

Military analyst Bill Lind, a former top adviser to U.S. Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), and now president of the Washington-based Military Reform Institute, said the craft “has considerable potential for use in the Third World,” which he said is the proper role for the Marine Corps.

Change in Conditions

“The Marine Corps orientation is toward the Third World,” he said. “The Marine Corps is too small to make a difference in Europe. The day of the amphibious warfare against a strong, dug-in defender is over.”

Some analysts suggest that even in Third World countries, attack landings by sea are a relic of the past.

“The military insists on reliving World War II, preparing to assault the Japanese empire by sea with overwhelming power,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information.

“They insist on these high-priced amphibious wonder weapons that, because of radar and satellites, are easy targets for even a few Third World shepherds with decent weapons,” Carroll said.

Norman Polmar, director of the U.S. Naval Institute Military Database, a civilian think-tank, said the LCAC is “is a good program technologically at a reasonably good cost, but it’s gearing up for a kind of assault that will probably never occur because it won’t work.”

Supporter Disagrees

Quist disagreed and noted that the LCAC is designed to allow the Navy and Marines to strike at a location where the adversary is not prepared.

“We had great satellite intelligence in 1973 which we shared with the Israelis, and the Egyptians were still able to cross the Suez Canal in a complete surprise and capture the Sinai,” Quist said.

“So I don’t agree that there will never be another surprise (landing),” he said. “I think there will be a need for the capability far into the future. The LCAC is designed to give us that capability.”

To a large degree, the future of the Marine Corps is tied to the need for a sea-based fighting force.

“The Defense Act of 1947-48 assigned the Marine Corps one major duty: to develop amphibious tactics,” said Buchanan of the Center for Defense Information. “The Marines see that as their license to stay alive. If that was ever taken away from us, we would not have a justification to remain as the nation’s ‘force in readiness.’ ”

Escapes Problems

The LCAC has not suffered the political opposition and design problems that have plagued several other big-ticket items of military hardware (including the Marines’ proposed Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft).

“When you talk about military procurement, everything is controversial,” said a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee who asked not to be identified. “The LCAC, though, has been a favorite of the Congress, partly because of the Marine Corps.

“The Marines tend to get what they want from Congress because they’re the smallest service, they’re politically popular, and they have a reputation for not asking for a bunch of unneeded things.”

Still, the LCAC program has not been trouble free.

Original plans called for 108 of the craft to be ready by 1993. That has now been revised to 90 craft by 1995--with six currently at Camp Pendleton and a like number at Little Creek, which have not yet endured an extended test at sea.

Engine Problems

The Navy put the program on hold for several months in 1986 because of undue engine wear during testing that was blamed on bearing failures and problems with the propellers.

At a length of 88 feet and a width of 47 feet, an LCAC has two gas-turbine engines to produce the four-foot cushion of air between the hull and the sea or ground, and two engines to turn the two four-bladed, 12-foot propellers.

“Imagine someone building the first helicopter,” suggested Mike Hallahan, director of air-cushion vehicle marketing for Textron Marine Systems, which developed the LCAC. “I’m sure the first one had some problems. Well, so did the LCAC. It had kinks we’ve straightened out.”

Production is currently under way at both Textron Marine Systems in New Orleans and Avondale Industries of Gulfport, Miss., which gained a share of the contract under competitive bidding.

Declining to provide exact figures for competitive reasons, Hallahan said the next two craft will be delivered “under budget and ahead of schedule.”

Its Main Job

Launched from any of four different types of ships, the LCAC’s main job is to carry equipment and weapons ashore, including 60-ton tanks.

The furious propeller wash and spray prohibits anyone from riding on the cargo bay; most Marines will come ashore in helicopters or slower landing craft.

The LCAC’s advantage is its ability to launch assaults from far “over the horizon” (which is generally 12 miles from shore) and land on beaches that otherwise would be impenetrable. At present the LCAC is unarmed, but there is talk of mounting a machine gun or rocket launcher.

Military officers are fond of noting that before the LCAC, the percentage of the world’s land mass accessible to an amphibious assault had been relatively unchanged since the Revolutionary War.

More Places to Land

One projection is that landings can now be made on 80% of the world’s coastlines, compared to 17% before the LCAC. In other words, an adversary must worry about, and attempt to defend, a much larger portion of its coastline.

“Last year in Australia we went over two to three feet of coral,” said Navy Capt. David L. Ihlenfeld, commander of the LCAC facility at Camp Pendleton. “The Australians thought it couldn’t be done, but we did it, with minimal damage to the (air cushion) bag.”