USMC programmes at stake if budgetary shortages persist

Several US Marine Corps (USMC) procurement programmes are incurring costly schedule delays as a direct result of lawmakers' failure to pass the Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13) defence appropriations bill, the service's top resourcing officer said on 12 February.

The USMC had planned to begin in FY13 buying Northrop Grumman's AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), a mobile ground-based multirole radar in development since 2009 to provide air defence and to carry out short-range air defence (SHORAD) and air surveillance missions.

Not only was the programme ahead of schedule but a system had also been delivered in July 2012 to the Surface Combat Systems Center (SCSC) on Wallops Island, Virginia, for operational testing.

However, the lack of an FY13 appropriations bill is delaying the projects to the point where it could trigger a report to Congress under the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which regulates programme schedules and costs, Lieutenant General John Wissler, USMC deputy commandant for programmes and resources, said during a Navy League meeting near Washington, DC.