V-22 Feels the Cold Hand of Death on Its Shoulder

The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey team is charting unknown waters. The military tiltrotor program has been dealt hammer blows by headline-grabbing accidents and technical woes, mistakes and misjudgements within the service team running the Osprey trials, a dismissive Government Accounting Office report, repeated attacks from the media and Capitol Hill -- and some fundamental doubts about the future of the Osprey itself thanks to the coming Rumsfeld defense review.

Despite this gloomy outlook, those involved with the Osprey remain steadfast in their commitment to tiltrotor technology and the benefits it should bring to operators worldwide. More fundamentally, the program remains alive, despite expectations that it would be cancelled earlier this year.

Following the crash on December 11, 2000, one that claimed the lives of 19 Marines, an independent review of the program was called by General James Jones, Commandant of the Marine Corps. An expert panel submitted its recommendations in May, giving qualified approval to the V-22, and to the tiltrotor concept in general. The panel said tiltrotor technology is sound and that the Osprey's combination of speed, range and lift capacity is unmatched by any current alternative aircraft.

But while they agreed the Osprey remains the best vehicle for a range of specific missions, a host of additional testing and design modifications were called for-including research into the aerodynamic phenomenon that was a factor in both recent crashes, and which remains not fully understood.

The investigation into the Osprey crash at Tucson, Arizona, on April 8, 2000, blamed a combination of human factors for inducing a "vortex ring state" around the aircraft. This phenomenon causes a rotary-wing aircraft to stall if it descends too fast, and was again a factor in the December 11 crash, in North Carolina. A ruptured hydraulic line was also found to be partially at fault and the panel recommended that program officials "investigate the feasibility of a nacelle redesign" to allow easier inspection of key components, including the hydraulics.

Former Martin Marietta chief Norman Augustine, one of the experts involved in the four-month program review, was quoted as saying, "This is an aircraft that in terms of reliability and maintainability is not ready for operational use or production." A delay for the Osprey of up to two years was predicted by the review panel to implement all its recommendations.

A low-key, but official, green light for the Osprey followed later in May when Edward 'Pete' Aldridge (the Pentagon's new undersecretary for defense acquisition, technology and logistics) approved U.S. Navy plans to continue low-rate production of the V-22. The expert review panel had recommended that Osprey production continue at the "minimum sustaining level," although no one has yet specified what that level should be. Current plans for low rate initial production (LRIP) cover 29 MV-22B aircraft for the US Marine Corps -- five funded in FY97, seven in FY98, seven in FY99 and 10 in FY00.

It is unlikely that these numbers will now be reached, at least in the original time scale. The first LRIP MV-22B made its maiden flight on April 30, 1999. Osprey service trials are being conducted by VMMT-204, based at New River, North Carolina, but all Ospreys have remained grounded since the December crash.