Marine Corps

The August debt-ceiling deal ordered $350 billion in national defense cuts over a decade.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos huddled Wednesday morning with the managers of the F-35 fighter program, according to a senior service official.

“We do this no less than twice a month,” Assistant Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said Wednesday.

Amos has taken on a major role in keeping the often-troubled F-35 program from careening out of control, which could place it on the chopping block due to shrinking Pentagon budgets.

As the Marine Corps enters the post-Afghanistan era, it is grappling with several complex questions. And a top Marine leader is slated to address those very issues Wednesday morning.

The price of operating the Marine Corps' prized V-22 tiltrotor aircraft grew by $46.1 billion since 2008, Bloomberg News reported.

The lifetime cost of operating the aircraft, which are key to the Marines' long-term plans, was estimated in 2008 at $74 billion. That estimate now stands at $121.5 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing Pentagon data.

The report points to "increased maintenance and support costs."

Fiscal pressures appear likely to force the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to get smaller, one defense analyst says — but he warns against cutting too deep.

Nathan Freier of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Army War College notes in a recent report that the “political and fiscal environment does not bode well for U.S. ground forces.”

A senior military official says U.S. forces soon will begin winding down counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps commandant is standing behind a big-ticket combat vehicle program that senators want to kill.

The Obama administration’s decision to station Marines in Australia is not intended as a message to China, the Pentagon said Wednesday.



The deployment next year will bring an initial 250 Marines to Australia on a six-month rotation.

Additional Pentagon spending cuts would be dangerous and force the military to cut everything from personnel to ammunition to training.