Maligned V-22 Osprey Confounds Critics

On March 22, two Marine V-22 Osprey rotorcraft from the amphibious assault vessel USS Kearsarge rescued an Air Force pilot whose fighter had crashed in Libya. It was the first time Marines had used the V-22 in such a mission, and the operation went very well owing to the fact that the V-22 is the only aircraft in the world that can fly as far and fast as a turboprop airplane, and then hover or land like a helicopter. Within 90 minutes the downed pilot was safely retrieved, opening a new chapter in the expanding chronicle of Osprey successes. The V-22s used in the Libyan rescue mission had been sent to the Mediterranean from a Marine unit operating in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where local commanders have praised the agility and resilience of the aircraft. Only weeks before the rescue, the unit in Helmand had recorded the 100,000th flight hour for the V-22 program, which is rapidly changing the way the Marine Corps performs military operations.  

Last November, the two chairmen of the president’s bipartisan deficit commission included early termination of V-22 production in their list of suggested savings from the military budget, citing the program’s “troubled history” and maintenance issues. Apparently the staffers who put together the recommendations didn’t realize that the Osprey has become by far the safest rotorcraft in the Marine Corps air fleet, suffering no fatal accidents in over a decade despite prolonged deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and other places. The only fatal accident to occur recently was the loss of an Air Force V-22 during a combat mission in Afghanistan, and in that mishap 16 of the 20 personnel on board survived a high-speed collision with the ground despite the fact that the V-22 flipped over, due to a host of survivability features built into the aircraft.
The staffers probably also didn’t realize that for all its technological sophistication, the V-22 is actually the cheapest rotorcraft that the Marines operate when measured in terms of the cost per seat mile. The reason these facts are not widely known is that arcane warfighting systems like the V-22 seldom get covered in the general media unless something really bad happens, and that usually means either loss of life or a big hike in expected costs. The Osprey has suffered both kinds of setbacks during its history, but not lately so the views many “experts” have of the program are outdated. READ HERE