America’s Osprey Solution to Anti-Ship Missile Defenses

James Hasik

Security,

A wider array of USAF and USMC operating fields around the world could make battlegroups less essential.

On Monday, the American Hellenic Institute hosted a luncheon with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos on the occasion of the rollout of a paper by Dan Gouré's of the Lexington Institute on “Souda Bay: NATO’s Military Gem in the Eastern Mediterranean.” I appreciated the free lunch, and some of the discussion that followed. Loren Thompson reminded his colleague, with a useful softball question, to talk about how the base would be a good location for half a dozen V-22 Ospreys and a pair of KC-130 Hercules tanker-transports. That’s the composition of the composite air squadron within a handful of those new model, shore-based air-ground task forces of the U.S. Marine Corps. Benghazi, he noted, is easily within range and an hour’s flying time of the NATO airfield at Souda Bay. Not much further away are Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Syria—if anyone were keen to go there kinetically. To this end, Crete would be a seriously useful island. But if so, then so would be Mallorca, Sardinia, Sicily and Cyprus. And if those places in the middle of the midland sea are so useful, what does that say about the importance and future composition of naval forces?