The Marine Corps officially has reactivated considered one of two light attack helicopter squadrons it shut down in 2022 as a part of its overall force redesign.
Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 269, under 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, stood back up at Marine Corps Air Station Recent River, North Carolina, on Monday, in response to a Marine Corps press release.
“It was a decidedly somber day when HMLA-269 deactivated,” Col. Davis Fitzsimmons, commander of Marine Aircraft Group 29, said within the news release. “That was definitely reversed today.”
The “Gunrunners” squadron flies the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter and the UH-1Y Venom utility helicopter.
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The helicopter squadron was deactivated in December 2022 because the Marine Corps recalibrated its aviation needs and locations in a world shuffle that touched jets, fixed wing, helicopters and reached each coasts, Hawaii and Okinawa, Japan.
In his 2020 document laying out Force Design 2030, then-Commandant Gen. David Berger explained the squadron drawdown as related to the Corps cutting of three infantry battalions through the same force structure moves.
“While this capability has a specific amount of relevance to crisis and contingency missions which we must still be prepared to execute, it’s operationally unsuitable for our highest-priority maritime challenges and excess to our needs with the divestment of three infantry battalions,” Berger wrote.
Personnel with the squadron rotated to other Marine units following its deactivation. But its equipment was preserved to “maintain a versatile ready bench for the service and preserve the power to make future adjustments,” Marine officials said on the time.
Retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Lawrence Reeve Jr. told Marine Corps Times earlier in 2024 when the reactivation was first announced in March that he suspected, even in 2022, the squadron wouldn’t be gone for long.
Lawrence first served with the squadron in 1994 and later deployed with the unit to Iraq five times.
He doubted its disappearance mainly since the move left your entire East Coast with a single light attack squadron because the Marine Corps had shifted most of its assets to California, Hawaii and Japan.
Marine Corps Times attempted to succeed in the Marine Corps for comment on specifics regarding the choice to reactivate the squadron and received no response as of Friday.
While current variants of the Viper and Venom have been in energetic service since 2010 and 2008 respectively, that are relatively young for military aircraft, their basic designs date back to the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies.
The Corps underwent a serious upgrade program planning to update the aircraft’s Super Cobra and Twin predecessors through the Nineties that resulted in today’s helicopters.
In March, Bell Textron announced structural and power upgrades to the aircraft that it expects will keep them flying into the 2040s, which is the Corps’ current plan.
For what comes next, the service was closely monitoring the Army’s Future Vertical Lift program. A portion of that program called for a brand new future attack reconnaissance aircraft, which sought to switch each the Army’s OH-58 Kiowa Scout helicopter and its AH-64 Apache, an identical capability to the Viper.
Nevertheless, the Army canceled the longer term attack reconnaissance aircraft portion of this system earlier in 2024, leaving a spot in how each services plan to maneuver beyond existing, aging attack helicopters.
Together with HMLA 269, the Marines also deactivated HMLA-469 out of Camp Pendleton, California, in December 2022. That squadron stays deactivated.
The move aligned with the service’s most recently published aviation plan in 2022, which called for the active-duty light attack squadrons to attract down from seven to 5 and integration of the 2 reserve squadrons for essential tasks.
At the moment there have been seven energetic light attack squadrons, one fleet alternative squadron and one reserve squadron each containing 15 Vipers and 12 Venoms. One other reserve squadron held 10 Vipers and eight Venoms, in response to the aviation plan.
The service’s latest configuration briefly had five energetic squadrons with the fleet alternative and reserve squadrons in the identical setup.
The reactivation will push the numbers back as much as six energetic squadrons.
In total, the Corps requires a combination of 284 Venoms and Vipers to meet those mission obligations. Over a five-year period from 2017 to 2021 the Vipers averaged a 72% readiness rating while the Venoms managed 68%, in response to the aviation plan.
Greater than 84% of the parts needed for the aircraft are interchangeable and the 2 platforms fly nearly 1 / 4 of all Marine aviation flight hours.
On the fixed wing side, the Marine Corps deactivated its F/A-18 Hornet pilot training squadron in late 2023, and graduated its final AV-8B Harrier II mechanics earlier in 2024 after disbanding its Harrier training unit in late 2021.
Moves with the Hornet and Harrier are as a consequence of the jets being replaced by the F-35.
Squadron commander Lt. Col. Jens Gilbertson identified that HMLA-269 had been named the sunshine attack squadron of the yr by the Marine Corps Aviation Association eight times, greater than every other such squadron within the Corps’ history.
“Ultimately, it was up to those Marines to get it done,” Gilbertson said. “They’ve discipline, they usually have precision, and that’s the identical discipline and precision they’re going to bring once they maintain and fly our aircraft.”
The Viper aircraft made news recently when a crew with the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 262 Reinforced, thirty first Marine Expeditionary Unit successfully struck a moving goal at sea for the primary time within the region with the brand new “fire and forget” AGM-179 joint air-to-ground missile.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.