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The Osprey Goes to War
USNI Proceedings Magazine
Issue: October 2007 Vol. 133/10/1,256 The Osprey Goes to War By Richard Whittle After a tumultuous quarter-century in development, the Marines' V-22 tiltrotor aircraft is ready to fly combat missions in Iraq. The Marines start learning in October whether the cost of fielding their top aviation priority-24 years, $22 billion, 30 lives, and unrelenting criticism-was worth it. The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft is going into battle. As this issue of Proceedings went to press in late September, the first operational squadron of Ospreys-Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 out of Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina-was due at al Asad air base for a scheduled seven-month deployment. VMM-263 was to start flying combat missions in October. The first operational use of the Osprey could help settle a debate that has raged for years about the safety, survivability, reliability, utility, and value of the helicopter-airplane hybrid. Grounded for 17 months after two fatal crashes in 2000, the Osprey has been re- engineered and retested over the past seven years, but critics still insist the V-22 is too fragile and vulnerable for Iraq. A report issued this year by the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank often critical of the Defense Department, said the V-22 was "poised to reveal fundamental design flaws that may cost even more lives." Marines who fly and maintain the Osprey, Marine Corps leaders, and officials in the V-22 program couldn't disagree more. The MV-22B version that VMM-263 will fly in Iraq still has numerous maintenance "gripes," as mechanics call them, but hasn't experienced the hydraulic line chafing and other problems of earlier models. It's a different aircraft, they say. Ready to Go "It is not a science experiment, it's a fielded aircraft," VMM-263's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Rock, told reporters at a V-22 media day at the Quantico, Virginia, Marine base last spring. "The people who fly the plane, we have families. We wouldn't be flying something that we thought was going to kill us." Ospreys flown by the Marines and Naval Air Systems Command's test squadron, VMX-22, have logged more than 26,000 flight hours without a serious mishap since the V-22 returned to flight in May 2002, NAVAIR program spokesman James Darcy said. During a 36-day deployment-for-training to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, VMM-263 flew 631 hours and made all 72 scheduled sorties during Desert Talon combat exercises. Major General Kenneth Glueck, commander of 2d Marine Air Wing, said during an impromptu interview as he visited VMM-263 at New River in August that he expects the V-22 to "add great combat capability to the Marine air-ground task force that we have in place over there today. It's truly a transformational capability." Built by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, and Boeing Co.'s helicopter division in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, the Osprey tilts two huge wingtip rotors upward to take off and land like a helicopter and swivels them forward to fly like a fixed-wing aircraft. That gives it about twice the speed and up to four times the range of the 1960s-era CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters the Marines are buying 360 Ospreys to replace. Hot LZs "Definitely it'll be less vulnerable when you start talking about en route portions of the flight," Glueck said. "They take off from the zone and they fly to high altitudes, where they're outside the weapons engagement envelopes." The Osprey cruises at about 230 knots, roughly 265 mph, and the CH-46 at 110 knots, or just over 125 mph. Critics have contended that the Osprey must come into landing zones slowly and will be especially vulnerable in hot LZs. Pilots and others say that's a misimpression. "I don't think it's going to be any more vulnerable than the 46 or the 53," Glueck said. A CH-46 can "usually come into a zone a little bit quicker than the 53s. The V-22 is kind of in between the two." The V-22 will have fighter or helicopter gunship escorts when going into zones where there's a known threat, Glueck said, and the Marines have mounted a 7.62-caliber M240G machine gun on the rear ramp. The Osprey also has chaff dispensers, infrared suppressors, and electronic defenses. The Marine version of the Osprey, the MV-22, currently costs $69.3 million to $110 million per aircraft, depending on whether all program costs are averaged into the price, NAVAIR spokesman Darcy said. The Air Force is buying 50 CV-22 Ospreys packed with special operations gear that raises the "flyaway" cost to $86 million. Death in the Desert V-22 supporters point out that the Osprey actually suffered fewer crashes in development than did many other aircraft when they were experimental. But much of the controversy over the V-22 stems from an operational test in April 2000 at Marana, Arizona, in which one of the earliest versions of the Osprey crashed while carrying a crew of four and 15 Marine infantrymen in the back. All were killed. An investigation blamed the crash on "vortex ring state," a phenomenon in which a rotor that descends too quickly into its own downwash can stop producing lift. The V-22 that crashed at Marana descended as much as three times faster than the flight manual limit of 800 feet per minute at speeds of less than 40 knots, the investigation found. All Ospreys were grounded for 17 months after another crash in December 2000 at New River in which an hydraulic leak and a software glitch in the flight-control computer combined to bring down a V-22 flying in airplane mode, killing the crew of four. A blue-ribbon commission appointed by the Pentagon in 2001 concluded there was no evidence to support contentions that tiltrotor technology was fatally flawed, as some critics had charged. Bell-Boeing later re-engineered the layout of electrical and hydraulic lines whose close proximity was found to be the cause of hydraulic leaks. Company test pilots also made numerous flights trying to put the V-22 into vortex ring state at high altitude. They found that, with sufficient warning and altitude, an Osprey pilot could escape vortex ring state simply by tilting the rotors forward and flying out of the downwash. Following those tests, NAVAIR added a warning tone and warning light to the V-22 to alert pilots when an Osprey is bordering on vortex ring state. The V-22's troubled past has left many Marines wary of riding in the aircraft, but VMM-263 and the Corps' other Osprey squadrons have been giving familiarization rides to various Marine and Army units. After two such flights in July for 2d Battalion/24th Marines, a Reserve unit in Chicago, VMM-263 received a letter from the battalion commander saying, "VMM-263 has turned 2/24 from Osprey doubters to Osprey supporters." Cheney Tried to Cancel Critics who say the tiltrotor is too costly have long contended that the Marines should have given up on the V-22 and instead bought cheaper helicopters for the medium-assault mission. The Osprey originally was supposed to go into service in 1991, eight years after it was begun, and cost about $20 billion for a program expected to produce 1,086 aircraft for all four armed services. The projected cost for the 410 Ospreys now in service or being built is more than $54 billion, including the money spent on development. When he was Defense Secretary in 1989, Vice President Dick Cheney tried to cancel the Osprey, giving up only after a four-year political battle with the Marines and V-22 backers in Congress. The alternative most often proposed has been a combination of UH-60 Black Hawks to carry up to 11 Marines at a time and CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy-lift choppers to haul cargo, both built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. The Marines have steadfastly insisted they need the speed and payload of the Osprey, whose cabin is sized to carry 24 fully combat- loaded Marines or 12 litters for casualties. The Marines' and NAVAIR's greater concern during final preparations for the Iraq deployment was a list of maintenance problems, including malfunctions of the Osprey's de-icing gear, high failure rates of "air cycle machines" that cool the cockpit and avionics, cracks in panels that cover the infrared suppressors, fuel system leaks, and more minor problems. Those issues were highlighted in a June message from 2d Marine Air Wing's aviation logistics department to the Osprey fleet discussing steps needed to cope with the maintenance deficiencies. NAVAIR and the Marines said measures to resolve all the issues in the memo had been dealt with or fixes were under way by mid-summer, and a Bell-Boeing team of technicians worked feverishly at New River before VMM-263 left to install modifications to the squadron's Ospreys. Bell-Boeing also was sending 14 technicians to Iraq with VMM-263 and engine-maker Rolls Royce was dispatching two more to help the squadron's mechanics and technicians. The companies and NAVAIR also have taken pains to provide extra stockpiles of spare parts to support VMM-263 in Iraq, and the Marines have given the squadron first claim on parts and personnel, in some cases taking them from the two other operational V-22 squadrons. The de-icing issue was a major factor in a decision to send the squadron's aircraft and crews to the eastern Mediterranean aboard the USS Wasp (LHD-1) amphibious assault ship and have them fly into Iraq from there rather than "self-deploy" by flying all the way with aerial refueling. The rejected plan to self-deploy would have sent the squadron of ten Ospreys and six to eight KC-130 tankers across the north Atlantic with five stops along the way. Even in summer, aircraft flying that route can suffer icing after they fly through clouds. One of two Ospreys that flew a similar route to the July 2006 Farnborough International Airshow in England made a precautionary landing in Iceland after ice caused compressor stalls in one of its engines. Avoiding Wear and Tear The Marines have often advertised the Osprey's ability to self-deploy, and VMM-263 practiced for it with two transcontinental deployments for training during its workup for Iraq. But maintenance officers and NCOs were pleased with the decision to go by ship, saying it would reduce wear and tear on the aircraft and ease their workload on arrival at al Asad. The de-icing problems shouldn't affect operations in Iraq, pilots said, but will result in all Ospreys being listed as partial mission capable rather than full mission capable, affecting the aircraft's readiness ratings. NAVAIR V-22 program manager Colonel Matthew Mulhern said floating rather than flying the V-22s to Iraq also made sense because of the heavy demand for aerial tankers. In Iraq, the MV-22Bs of VMM-263, a former CH-46 squadron that transitioned to the tiltrotor in March 2006, are to transport troops and cargo, evacuate casualties, and serve on standby for tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel missions. VMM-263 will replace HMH-362 out of Hawaii, a squadron of CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters, an aging medium-lift version of the CH-53, whose later models are heavy-lift aircraft. The first test the Marines have chosen for the V-22 could hardly be tougher. The broiling heat and swirling sand of Iraq have wreaked havoc on military helicopters of all kinds, damaging rotor blades, wearing out engines, and creating record backlogs at maintenance depots back home. "It's going to be hard work maintaining this airplane," program manager Mulhern said. "It's hard work maintaining any airplane over there." The pilots and maintenance personnel of VMM-263, who spent 18 months preparing and training for their Iraq deployment, are leaving New River confident in their ability to perform their mission and only somewhat distracted by the uncommon press and official attention paid to the first deployment of the V-22. Lieutenant Colonel Rock and a number of others in his squadron, whose pilots include four lieutenant colonels and eight U.S. Naval Academy graduates, are among the most experienced Osprey pilots in the Fleet. A third or more of VMM-263's two dozen pilots and many of its roughly 160 enlisted personnel have previously deployed to Iraq. Though Rock has flown the V-22 since before the program's darkest days in 2000, he emphasized to members of his squadron that their job was not to prove the V-22's value but to support Marines on the ground, the same as if the unit were still flying CH-46s. "The thing that I aspire to most with this airplane is that you not say, 'That's a V-22 squadron,'" Rock said in an interview months before VMM-263 departed. "We're medium-lift transport. (The Osprey) happens to be our weapons system." Mr. Whittle, longtime Pentagon correspondent of the Dallas Morning News, is writing a book about the V-22 Osprey for Simon & Schuster. |
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