Just hours before the worst Marine Corps aviation crash in more than a decade, the Corps' top general for aviation released a retirement letter that outlined his concerns about the troubled state of the aviation fleet and the struggle to keep its planes and helicopters flying. 

One of the Corps' top priorities should be retaining enough of its most experienced enlisted maintainers, according to the former commander of Marine aviation.

"I've learned as the Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation that it is the imperative to have high-quality, highly trained, motivated and incentivized Marines in the right qualification density to meet and exceed our readiness requirements," Lt. Gen. Jon Davis wrote in a letter released to the public Monday. 

Davis retired on Monday after 37-year career in the Marine Corps, after leading Marine aviation since June 2014.

Coincidentally, Davis' retirement letter was released publicly just hours before a Marine KC-130T from a Reserve unit in New York crashed in a field in Mississippi, killing 15 Marines and a Navy corpsman.

Davis recounted that Marine aviation has conducted five readiness reviews since 2014.

"A key finding common to all of these reviews emphasized the importance of retaining highly qualified enlisted maintainers

trained properly and provided to the fleet in the correct density," Davis wrote. "Each report discovered a lack of Marines possessing the requisite skills our ready force demands, causing us to reestablish and increase our benchmarks."

During the past three years, Davis wrestled with Marine aviation’s readiness crisis, which was the result of budget cuts, years of sustained operations, delays in purchasing new aircraft, and the Marine Corps letting highly trained maintainers go in the last drawdown.

"We let some people go that probably

if we had better insight into who we had out there and the qualifications of those Marines inside the maintenance departments of our flying units

you’d say: ‘These people can’t go,’" Davis told reporters in February.

The Marine Corps has recently sought to address the issue by offering maintainers with certain qualifications $20,000 on top of a retention bonuses as part of the fiscal 2018 Selective Retention Bonus program. Eligible maintainers must re-enlist for four years

two of which must be spent with their current units.

"This bonus is going to take that hard-won experience at the senior sergeant, staff NCO level, retain it in the squadron at certain numbers so they can train the next generation in those certification requirements," Lt. Gen. Mark Brilakis, of Manpower & Reserve Affairs, told Congress in March.

Marine aviation needs to look out for its people, wrote Davis, who handed the reins as deputy commandant for aviation to Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder on Monday.

"We're always in a quest for better readiness," Davis wrote. "I would say it's not just the quest for materiel readiness; it is the pursuit of personnel readiness of our enlisted maintainers."

Going forward, retaining the right maintainers and pilots will be a major issue for Marine aviation, especially as the operations tempo stays high and private sector employees try to lure Marines away from the Corps, Davis wrote.

"We are actively fixing the readiness, and that will help with retention," Davis wrote. "But, as Marines, we all need to be supportive of each other in order to keep our people in the cockpit, keep our training base strong and cultivate experience across our Corps."

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