to cover great distances very quickly and
show up ready. It gives the combatant
commander a unique tool.’High priority
The detachment has a very high
readiness rate. This is largely because
of the ight in support of deployed
unit (FISDU) schedule, high-priority
ights from Cherry Point to Morón that
provide necessary parts and supplies.
The squadron also uses these ights to
facilitate training. ‘The FISDU give us a
lot of exibility’, explains Casey, ‘because
we don’t need to have equipment such
as spare engines and propellers sitting
in Spain. With about a day’s notice we
can launch a FISDU out to them with
everything they need to get up and
running again.’
Casey has the job of ensuring all the
di erent departments in the squadronare working together. ‘Without a
good relationship between ops and
maintenance, you will fail,’ he asserts. ‘Ops
can schedule sorties but to meet them,
you have to have the airplanes. You have
to work with maintenance to ensure you
are not stressing the aircraft to the point
where a serviceability issue becomes a
chronic problem. You don’t want to have
aircraft that are just good enough to do
the mission but then come back broken.
You have to keep your sorties at a pace
that you can consistently y your plan or
else your plan keeps falling apart and you
have to constantly rebuild it.’
Most of the KC-130Js assigned to
‘Otis’ are 10-15 years old and have
been worked very hard. ‘Because of the
operational tempo that we have had,
we have over own these airplanes past
their service life glideslope. We are a
low-density, high-demand asset whereAbove: A section
of VMA-231
AV-8B Harrier IIs
plugged-in for
gas. The KC-130J
is a versatile
asset for the US
Marine Corps,
being able to fi ll
a wide range of
roles.
Left top to bottom:
Maj Chuck Casey,
VMGR-252’s
operations offi cer.
Maj Tyler ‘Dutch’
Holland has
commanded
the squadron’s
Special Purpose
Marine Air-
Ground Task
Force (SP-MAGTF)
detachment.
Right: The
advances in the
KC-130J resulted
in the USMC
reducing the
cockpit crew to
just two pilots,
although refueling
missions see
the crewmaster
manning a third
station up front.UNIT REPORT // VMGR-252
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