[Dawes]

Thought this was an interesting look at the V-22:



Military

Agony and Adjustment: The Odyssey of the Osprey


Overhaul & Maintenance Jun 01 , 2009 , p. 65
Jerome Greer Chandler


The V-22 Osprey finally is coming of age.

A quarter century since development began—four crashes and 30 lives later—the most-maligned aircraft ever to enter the inventory of the U.S. military is finding its sea legs. The V-22 Osprey finally is coming of age. Eighty-seven of an authorized fleet of 458 tilt-rotor, vertical take-off and landing aircraft are operational. Plans call for 360 MV-22Bs for the Marines, 50 CV-22Bs for the Air Force and 48 MV-22Bs for the Navy, although none of the Navy’s have yet been built. The first fleet Ospreys went to war for the Marines in October 2007, when 10 MV-22Bs flown by the VM-263 “Thunder Chicken” squadron started sorties in Iraq’s formerly volatile Al Anbar province, northwest of Baghdad. According to a Jan. 2, 2009, report by Christopher Bolkcom of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the aircraft completed more than 2,000 air support requests, in the process racking up more than 2,000 combat flight hours. The average mission-capable rate: 68%.

While that 68% isn’t where the Marine Corps wants to be, it’s light years ahead of where the problem-plagued aircraft was. Consider some context:

June 11, 1991. The fifth V-22 prototype crashed on its first flight. The cause, according to the CRS report: “incorrect wiring in a flight control system;”

July 20, 1992. The fourth Osprey prototype crashed on landing at Quantico Marine Air Station, killing seven. The CRS cites the reason as “a fire resulting from hydraulic component failures and design problems in the engine nacelles;”

April 8, 2000. A V-22 crashed near Tucson, Ariz., killing 19. CRS says an investigation determined the aircraft descended “in excess of the recommended flight envelope,” setting up something called “power settling”—the infamous “ring vortex state.” The military suspended flight testing for two months in the aftermath of the human factors accident;

Nov. 17, 2000. While deeming the V-22 “operationally effective,” the Department of Defense’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation says the aircraft still was not “operationally suitable, primarily because of reliability, maintainability, availability, human factors and interoperatiability issues;”

Dec. 11, 2000. An MV-22 crashed near Jacksonville, N.C. All four on board died. The Marine Corps later determined the crash was caused by what CRS cites as a “burst hydraulic line in one of the Osprey’s two engine casings, and a software malfunction that caused the aircraft to accelerate and decelerate unpredictably when the pilots tried to compensate.” The Marines ground the V-22 fleet;

December 2000. An anonymous letter was mailed to the media by someone claiming to be a V-22 mechanic, the CRS report says. In it, the author claims that Osprey maintenance records had been falsified for two years—this at the “explicit direction of the squadron commander.” Later reports show the V-22 squadron commander admitted to falsifying maintenance records, and the Marine Corps relieved him of command;

June 2005. CRS says a U.S. grand jury indicted a company for allegedly falsely certifying the quality of titanium tubing for the Osprey. The test program was suspended for 11 days.

By any metric—men, money, material—V-22’s learning curve has been astoundingly steep. Now, the people charged with the care and feeding of this decidedly different flying machine believe its problems are less dramatic and more tractable.


Sandy Solutions

One of the more proximate problems confronting the V-22 is powerplant longevity. The aircraft’s two Rolls-Royce AE1107Cs “are not lasting as long as expected,” says the CRS report. Initially, the Marine Corps anticipated the engines would stay on-wing approximately 600 flight hours. “However,” says the CRC, “fleet-wide engines are lasting about 420 flight hours, while aircraft deployed to Iraq are requiring engine change-outs about every 380 flight hours.”

“Three hundred and eighty [hours] is certainly less than we wanted,” conceded Marine Col. Matt Mulhern, the V-22’s joint program manager. Responsible for the maturation of both the Marine’s MV-22Bs and the Air Force’s CV-22Bs, Mulhern says on-wing time “is a function of the environment” in Iraq. Specifically, it’s the sand. “The make-up of the dirt and dust over in Iraq is different [than in the continental U.S.]. It’s more like fine talcum powder, as opposed to coarser-grained stuff that suffuses other arid areas.

The engine air/particle separators (EAPS) have had a tough time dealing with the fine airborne effluent. “Nothing is going to separate all that stuff,” says Mulhern. “Eventually you’re going to collect dust and dirt in the engine.” When it gets to the compressor section, it erodes the blades. That changes the airflow and cuts the power produced by the ostensibly 6,150 shp Rolls-Royce engines. “The turbine tends to cake up, and glass up,” he said.

The Marines responded by washing both the turbine and compressor sections. Mulhern says maintainers have increased on-wing time to “about 480 hours” in Iraq. That’s a 25% improvement. In more benign environments such as at the Marine Corp.’s New River, N.C., facility, he says the engines are getting about 1,300 hours on-wing.

Despite the best projections and the most arduous simulations, nothing remotely resembles the rigors of field. “True operational hours. [That’s] where you start to learn about an airplane,” says Mulhern. During developmental tests, the aircraft sits in a hangar when it’s not flying. It’s maintained by a cadre of top-flight technicians. “You treat [the aircraft] with kid gloves,” says the V-22 program manager. “They never get rained on.” It’s the operational environment that takes them to the edge.

In the maturational scheme of things, the Osprey still is a fledgling. While the program has been around for a quarter of a century, all V-22s combined have just racked up approximately 55,000 flight hours. And Mulhern said, “85% of those have just come in the last four years.”

Planners anticipated some issues, such as rotor blade erosion—this by virtue of what aircraft encountered at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and Twentynine Palms, Calif. But that was stateside sand. When the aircraft actually got to Iraq, “We didn’t have near the [rotor blade erosion] problems we thought we were going to have,” says the colonel.

What drove maintainers crazy, at least at first, was that insidious dust. If EAPS had a hard time handling Iraqi particulate infiltration, so did the V-22’s wiring system. The micro-fine, talc-like stuff “was actually working its way into the conduit of the wires,” says Mulhern. Because the Marines were performing essential engine washes, moisture mixed with the dust to produce a fast-hardening muck the colonel described as a kind of “Quikrete…It would just turn into a very hard little ball. And that would chafe the wire.” Technicians spent an inordinate amount of time troubleshooting shorts.

Things got so bad that one squadron commander told Mulhern his people were spending one hour of troubleshooting and wire repair for every flight hour. That wreaks havoc on the mission capability rate. The solution? Changing the wiring bundle parts code from strictly repairable to repairable or replaceable. “Once we did that, it settled itself down,” he said.


Sophisticated Schoolhouse

A whole array of Osprey issues seems to be settling down just now. One of the reasons is the concerted effort the U.S. military is making to better maintain the aircraft. It all starts with training, and that begins in a new 40,000-sq.-ft. V-22 Maintenance Training Facility at New River, N.C. The plant is a full-up, full-tilt training arena, replete with a 26,900-sq.-ft. bay that can accommodate as many as four full-size aircraft.

The facility sports a sophisticated fault-insertion system that allows future Osprey technicians to simulate specific squawks in a less intimidating environment. “Usually, when you’re training a maintainer, you take them out on a real airplane, which everybody is real antsy about,” says Mulhern. “You have some master sergeant breathing down your neck, and if you break anything he’s going to kill you.”

On a depot level, Marines are maintaining V-22s in existing facilities nearby, at the Fleet Readiness Center East (FRC-East) in Cherry Point, N.C.

So, how much of the facility commander’s time is the high-profile airplane taking up just now? “Frankly, not very much,” says Col. David Smith, FRC-East’s commanding officer. “That’s because we just inducted our first aircraft in March.” A second Osprey is set for June induction.

Look for intake to pick up steam at a slow but steady clip. Smith says V-22s are scheduled to roll into his depot-level maintenance plant after they’ve been operational for 60 months. The Marine Corps pegs its depot maintenance to months, rather than flight hours. The colonel estimates Fleet Readiness Center East will handle nine of the tilt-rotors over the next two years, but noted, “that cycle is not etched in stone yet, because we’re in the prototype phase.” The specific flow is “an engineering decision,” a decision predicated by data gathered for the craft’s Integrated Maintenance Program, or IMP.

The way things stand as of this writing, V-22 programmed depot maintenance will take 3,500 man-hours and consume 90 days, although Smith again emphasized these figures are “just an engineering estimate…That’s what we’re operating from as a baseline.”

While the cycle time is still subject to change, the mettle of the maintainers the Marines intend to employ is not. “We made a conscious, deliberate plan for staffing our initial V-22 stand-up,” says Smith. “We took people that were skilled artisans off of our other [aircraft] lines to bring in some A-Team type guys.”

The trick, of course, is to attract a cadre of accomplished technicians without eviscerating current aircraft lines—AV-8 Harriers, EA-6B Intruders, CH-53 heavy-lift helos and venerable CH-46 Sea Knights.

“We obviously did not want to stumble coming out of the gate,” says Smith. “We [also] did not want to undermine our other four aircraft lines.”

The solution: In addition to bringing in grey beards from other lines, FRC-East peppered the ranks of V-22 maintainers with younger people entering the workforce through co-op training programs. Helping to anchor the mix are former Marines with V-22 experience who used to work on the aircraft. “Now they’re in civilian clothes,” says Smith, “and they’re working on that same bureau number right here at FRC-East.”

All the Osprey mechanics are receiving decent doses of training, not just at the Marine Corp.’s New River training facility, but at “Bell Helicopter, where they’re making some of the large composite pieces and other components,” says Smith.

The V-22, a product of a Bell-Boeing collaboration, makes significant use of composite structures. Boeing Rotorcraft Systems is responsible for the fuselage, all subsystems, digital avionics and fly-by-wire flight control systems. Partner Bell Helicopter Textron’s territory takes in the wing, transmissions, empennage, rotor systems and engine installation, from its completion facility in Amarillo, Texas.


Depot-Level Surprises?

While earlier Osprey iterations gained notoriety for nasty surprises, Smith contends that’s not the case with the aircraft coming into FRC-East. “All of the surprises we’ve found have been pleasant [ones].” That’s because the aircraft he’s seeing in Cherry Point fly regularly. “And an aircraft that’s exercised regularly, and has daily turnaround and pre-flight inspections” is—by definition, he insists—better maintained.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues. Like Mulhern, Smith understands there’s plenty of room to ratchet up reliability. The depot already is ferreting out problems, like nacelle center bodies. Those structures diffuse the V-22’s heat signature, a critical capability in hostile areas of operation where heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles are a constant threat.

The nacelle center body is a $100,000 consumable part. “It was supposed to last a long, long time,” says Smith. “It’s lasted a fraction of that.” FRC East engineers and maintainers came up with a way to replace the tenth-of-a-million dollar part “at a fraction” of that cost.

Despite the gradual leveling of this aircraft’s tortuous learning curve, it’s still too early to make sweeping conclusions about whether the V-22 Osprey will ever be the resolute, reliable warfighter the U.S. military first envisioned at the program’s launch back in 1981. For now it is, perhaps, comfort enough that its growing pains mimic those of more mundane flying machines. Given the Osprey’s background, that’s progress. ◗

[shep854]

Thanks for finding and posting that article; it's an enlightening read.

"Despite the best projections and the most arduous simulations, nothing remotely resembles the rigors of field."

If only the naysayers would give heed to this little gem...

[Tony Williams]

It's interesting to see DARPA's Heliplane project for a new high-speed gyrodyne. A much simpler and safer technology than the V-22, but offering similar advantages of VTOL plus high speed.

Of course, the Fairey Rotodyne delivered that fifty years ago...oh, what a lost opportunity! :angry2:

[Kenneth P. Katz]

That comment reveals more about the times than about the V-22. Take a look at the mishap rates of 1950s military jets. Just as an example, for the period 1 July 1954 to 30 September 1955, the F7U-3 Cutlass had 6.77 accidents per 1000 carrier landings. And that is just carrier landings -- the Cutlass had numerous other ways of killing its pilots. Or how about the B-47, perhaps the most technologically influential jet aircraft ever and of enormous strategic importance. I have a book which lists every single B-47 built and its disposition. Some rather large % of B-47 aircraft were splattered. Shall we take a look at the F-100A or the B-58A, two marginally airworthy death traps. The KC-135A or the B-52 in their early days were no shining examples of safety either. The idea that the V-22 is some uniquely dangerous aircraft is just untrue.

Dawes, on Tue 9 Jun 2009 2213, said:

...the most-maligned aircraft ever to enter the inventory of the U.S. military ...

[rmgill]

Tony Williams, on Wed 10 Jun 2009 0251, said:

It's interesting to see DARPA's Heliplane project for a new high-speed gyrodyne. A much simpler and safer technology than the V-22, but offering similar advantages of VTOL plus high speed.

Of course, the Fairey Rotodyne delivered that fifty years ago...oh, what a lost opportunity! :angry2:

Side question, how'd the Rotodyne get by without a tail rotor?

[Tony Williams]

rmgill, on Fri 19 Jun 2009 0527, said:

Side question, how'd the Rotodyne get by without a tail rotor?

The rotor wasn't driven by a shaft, but by jets in the blade tips. So there was no torque effect to overcome.

Compared with the V-22, it was amazingly simple but also effective. At the time there was no requirement expressed for a VTOL transport able to carry a good load at a far higher speed and a longer range than any helicopter, so the military never bought any.

The usual reason given for its commercial failure as a small airliner was the noise from the tip jets (which were "hot jets" - they burned fuel) but this was being tackled at the time of the cancellation. I think that a more fundamental reason was that to make full use of the VTOL advantage it needed to operate from city-centre heliports, so it needed a network of such heliports to be built before any airline would be interested in buying it. The cost and planning issues involved in that probably had a bearing on its demise.

This post has been edited by Tony Williams: 19 June 2009 - 0242 AM

[shep854]

Ken Katz, don't forget the Boeing/Vertol/Piasecki tandem rotor helicopters. I don't remember reading much about the earlier designs' problems, but the CH-46 and -47 had really bad teething problems. Once, at OCS, I heard a sergeant refer to the -46 as a "Crowd Killer". When I asked him about it, he replied, "They fall out of the sky a lot." This was in 1975, and the -46 had been in service for over ten years. (Back then, I never heard them called "Phrogs")

The Chinook was in (great) danger of cancellation at one point, due to crashes--at a much greater rate than V-22s.

[aevans]

Tony Williams, on Fri 19 Jun 2009 0742, said:

Compared with the V-22, it was amazingly simple but also effective.

It would have made LZ ops a nightmare, both for the aircrew and personnel on the ground, with those turboprop blades spinning around so close to the deck.

[Tony Williams]

aevans, on Fri 19 Jun 2009 1632, said:

It would have made LZ ops a nightmare, both for the aircrew and personnel on the ground, with those turboprop blades spinning around so close to the deck.

I believe that a military version would have had a rear loading ramp, so it would be a question of training (always approach from the rear).

All weapon systems are compromises. That seems a small one to make to get the vastly increased speed and range over a helo. After all, the V-22 has massive compromises inherent in the design (the props are too big to be efficient propellers, too small to be efficient rotors, and too small to provide a safe engines-out autorotating descent - or indeed, any kind of safe descent!).

[Rod]

Bloomberg also had an article on the V-22 problems:
http://www.bloomberg...id=axdXXwjEYNYc

V-22’s Iraq Performance Should Prompt Program Review, GAO Says
Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Tony Capaccio

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- The V-22 Osprey’s performance during its 19 months in Iraq was substandard and the Pentagon should review whether the aircraft’s cost and reliability merit continuing the program, according to congressional auditors.

The tilt-rotor plane’s components wear out too soon, making it too costly to maintain and grounded too much of the time, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said.

The Defense Department has spent $28 billion on the aircraft developed and built by Textron Inc. and Boeing Co. and has bought 206 planes to date. It plans to spend $25 billion more on upgrades and the purchase of the remaining 252 planes in the 458-aircraft program for the Marine Corps and Air Force Special Operations Command.

Given the “significant funding needs” to complete the program, “now is a good time to consider the return on this investment as well as other, less costly alternatives that can fill the current requirement,” the watchdog agency said.

The report, scheduled for release at a congressional hearing today, is the first independent assessment of the V-22’s performance in Iraq. The aircraft has been in development for 20 years and Marine Corps officials say it is likely to be deployed in Afghanistan this year.

The Osprey has rotors that tilt, allowing it to take off and land like a helicopter. The military sees it as useful for long-range Marine Corps and commando missions such as those the Marines anticipate in Afghanistan.

Pentagon Response

David Ahern, a Pentagon acquisition official, defended the aircraft’s effectiveness in Iraq but said the GAO “properly identifies reliability and availability concerns.”

“Correcting the reliability and availability problems is a priority and actions are being taken,” Ahern stated in comments included in the report. “Neither the Defense Department nor the Marine Corps is satisfied,” he wrote in comments coordinated with the Marine Corps.

Ahern said the Pentagon sees no need for a reassessment of the program of the scope recommended by GAO, but “as more is learned about the V-22’s performance, future adjustments to planned quantities may be appropriate.”

Pentagon performance reviews of the Osprey in 2000 and 2001 criticized the aircraft for a host of deficiencies, including problems with its design, safety and reliability. Subsequent reviews concluded that the problems had been largely corrected.

No Heavy Combat

The V-22 didn’t face heavy combat conditions in Iraq. The first squadron of 12 arrived in October 2007, after the once- heavy fighting in Anbar province between U.S. forces and al- Qaeda insurgents had died down because local Sunni tribesmen had turned against the insurgents.

While the V-22 flew its assigned missions successfully, maintenance problems left the planes available for flight at rates “significantly below minimum required levels,” the GAO said.

During three periods studied during the V-22’s deployment from October 2007 through April 2009, the planes were available for combat operations on average 68 percent, 57 percent and 61 percent of the time, “while the minimum requirement” is 82 percent, said the GAO.

And these low rates “were not unique to the Iraq deployment” but were on par with other V-22 squadrons in the U.S., GAO said.

In addition, the 12 planes arrived with nearly three times the spare parts required, yet some parts wore out more quickly than expected, creating shortages that forced maintenance crews to cannibalize components from these planes or get them from Ospreys based in the U.S.

In addition to keeping the plane grounded, these constant repairs put the plane’s flying cost at $11,000 per hour, double the original estimate.

Design ‘Challenges’

The V-22’s continuing design “challenges have raised questions over whether the aircraft is best suited to accomplish” the full range of missions of the older aircraft it’s replacing, the agency said.

Ahern defended the V-22’s performance in Iraq.

“The aircraft was pressed into combat operations in Iraq at the first opportunity,” he wrote. “The V-22 is arguably the most survivable, versatile and capable medium-lift airframe in the Iraq theater” and “evidence in the report leads to a conclusion that the V-22 was operationally effective in Iraq,” Ahern wrote.

Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron’s Bell Helicopter unit co-produces the Osprey with Boeing’s Ridley Township, Pennsylvania, facility. Chicago-based Boeing makes the fuselage. Fort Worth, Texas-based Bell mates the wings and the tail to the fuselage and conducts flight tests.

Bell Helicopter spokesman Tom Dolney said that, while the companies haven’t seen the GAO report, “We have a plan in place and an ongoing program to improve the availability of the entire V-22 fleet.”

“We’ve been working with our customers and the Osprey industry team to identify components, support activities and designs that will improve aircraft availability. Several improvements are already in place,” Dolney said in an e-mail statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio at at acapaccio@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 23, 2009 11:48 EDT

[Dawes]

GAO report:


http://www.militaryt...prey_062309.pdf

[shep854]

It seems to me that the articles referred to are emphasizing problems more than the solutions, which are being implemented. It's like earlier "exposes" that blast a program because of failed tests, ignoring the fact that testing is supposed to cause failures.

[Doug Kibbey]

Kenneth P. Katz, on Fri 19 Jun 2009 0308, said:

That comment reveals more about the times than about the V-22. Take a look at the mishap rates of 1950s military jets. Just as an example, for the period 1 July 1954 to 30 September 1955, the F7U-3 Cutlass had 6.77 accidents per 1000 carrier landings. And that is just carrier landings -- the Cutlass had numerous other ways of killing its pilots. Or how about the B-47, perhaps the most technologically influential jet aircraft ever and of enormous strategic importance. I have a book which lists every single B-47 built and its disposition. Some rather large % of B-47 aircraft were splattered. Shall we take a look at the F-100A or the B-58A, two marginally airworthy death traps. The KC-135A or the B-52 in their early days were no shining examples of safety either. The idea that the V-22 is some uniquely dangerous aircraft is just untrue.

Ken,
IIRC, something like 1-out-of-5, fully 20% of all the B58's that ever flew, crashed eventually. That sound about right?
There is or used to be a website that chronicled all the B58 crashes.

It was still worth building, if only for the beauty and performance.

D.

[Special-K]

Army Times Story



Lawmaker: Time to put Osprey out of its misery

By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jun 23, 2009 19:56:22 EDT

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recommended Tuesday that the production of all MV-22 Ospreys be halted, saying that after more than two decades the hybrid aircraft still can’t complete the missions for which it was designed.

“It’s time to put the Osprey out of its misery, and time to put the taxpayers out of their miseries,” Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said following testimony on Capitol Hill from leading Marine aviation officials, representatives of the Government Accountability Office and defense analysts. Towns said he plans to present his recommendation to the House Appropriations Committee.

His comments come after the release Tuesday of a scathing report from the GAO questioning the Osprey’s ability to operate in high-threat environments — namely Afghanistan — and on Navy ships. Moreover, the program’s research, development, test and evaluation costs soared more than 200 percent — from $4.2 billion to $12.7 billion — between 1986 and 2007, according to the report, which notes also that the cost to procure the aircraft has jumped from $34.4 billion to $42.6 billion, even though the total buy has dropped from nearly 1,000 aircraft to less than 500.

And while its three consecutive deployments to Iraq prove the Osprey can complete its mission, “challenges may limit its ability to accomplish the full repertoire of missions of the legacy helicopters it is replacing,” the report says.

Marine officials staunchly defended the aircraft, saying it has the ability to save lives by flying high above the threats that insurgents and traditional combat weapons present.

The GAO report makes several observations, including:

• The Corps has been forced to “cannibalize” its MV-22s and the Osprey production line because parts wear out much quicker than anticipated.

• The aircraft lacks an integrated weapon system capable of suppressing threats while approaching a landing zone.

• The Osprey’s size prohibits it from fully using all the deck spots aboard Navy ships, and its “large inventory” of spare parts takes up too much room on the hangar deck space.

Retired Lt. Col. Dakota Wood, senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has suggested the Corps reconsider its plan to replace all of its CH-46E Sea Knight and CH-53D Sea Stallions and consider a mixed fleet instead.

“A mixed medium-lift fleet composed of MV-22s and a new helicopter would provide more options and increased flexibility for the service at less cost than a fleet composed only of MV-22s,” Wood said.

[Ivanhoe]

Using overall GDP deflator numbers, the increase in nominal prices from 1986 to 2007 were 167%, so an increase in RDT&E costs of only 200% is fucking miraculous.

Quote

The Corps has been forced to “cannibalize” its MV-22s and the Osprey production line because parts wear out much quicker than anticipated.

True for almost every vehicle in the sandbox, from what I hear. All the way down to Humvees.

Quote

The aircraft lacks an integrated weapon system capable of suppressing threats while approaching a landing zone.

So do UH-1, UH-60, CH-46, ...

Quote

The Osprey’s size prohibits it from fully using all the deck spots aboard Navy ships, and its “large inventory” of spare parts takes up too much room on the hangar deck space.

The Osprey has a fairly big (wide, actually) footprint on deck. We kinda knew that back in the 1980s. The Marines seem to accept its characteristics w.r.t. LHA operation, just as they worked around the challenges of CH-53 operation.

And how much is "too much" w.r.t. parts inventory? 5% of deck area? 300%?

Quote

“A mixed medium-lift fleet composed of MV-22s and a new helicopter would provide more options and increased flexibility for the service at less cost than a fleet composed only of MV-22s,” Wood said.

Oh yeah, that's exactly what the Marines need right now; a new aircraft procurement in an era of high optempo and massive federal budget deficits. Brilliant.

[Ken Estes]

Quote

The Osprey’s size prohibits it from fully using all the deck spots aboard Navy ships, and its “large inventory” of spare parts takes up too much room on the hangar deck space.

...remains curious, as all USN amphib ships from LHD-1 have been designed to V-22 deck spots and servicing. LHA class and LPH class is gone.

Quote

“A mixed medium-lift fleet composed of MV-22s and a new helicopter would provide more options and increased flexibility for the service at less cost than a fleet composed only of MV-22s,” Wood said.

The mixed heavy/medium fleet has been doctrinal for two generations. Why would a mixed medium fleet be better?? Who is this Dakota Wood??


[edit to add]: Sorry I asked:

Dakota L. Wood, Senior Fellow http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/5.AboutUs/Staff_Directory.dir/images/08StaffHeads190x280/DWood.jpg

Dakota L. Wood is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

He is currently involved in studying the operational challenges of irregular warfare, complex contingencies under high-technology conditions, and proliferated nuclear environments.

Before his retirement from the U.S. Marine Corps in 2005, LtCol Wood served in a wide variety of operational and staff assignments, including the Corps’ Military Assistant to the Director of the Office of Net Assessment – Mr. Andrew Marshall; and, providing defense issues analysis support to the Commandant of the Marine Corps on assignment to the Strategic Initiatives Group. Operationally, LtCol Wood was recognized for logistical planning and execution contributions to several operations, to include Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

Immediately following his retirement, he provided support to the Department of Homeland Security as Operations Officer for the National Biosurveillance Integration System.

Mr. Wood received a BS from the U.S. Naval Academy and holds an MA from the Naval War College, where he graduated with distinction, in addition to meritorious recognition from the Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting.

This post has been edited by Ken Estes: 24 June 2009 - 1215 PM

[Burncycle360]

High maintenance may be ok for special applications where you can baby them -- this is a very complex piece of machinery after all, even when compared to other aircraft. But making them the standard replacement for the CH-46... I'm more concerned at how maintenance intensive and costly the aircraft will be in 20-30 years when they're worn out and there's nothing to replace them with.

This post has been edited by Burncycle360: 24 June 2009 - 1239 PM

[shep854]

Cherry-picking axe-grinding.

[ScottBrim]

Ken Estes, on Wed 24 Jun 2009 1307, said:

Who is this Dakota Wood?? [edit to add]: Sorry I asked:

USMC veterans as a group seem to have a lot of very definite opinions about a lot of different things. Maybe it's what they were fed in boot camp or something.

[Ken Estes]

Burncycle360, on Wed 24 Jun 2009 1738, said:

High maintenance may be ok for special applications where you can baby them -- this is a very complex piece of machinery after all, even when compared to other aircraft. But making them the standard replacement for the CH-46... I'm more concerned at how maintenance intensive and costly the aircraft will be in 20-30 years when they're worn out and there's nothing to replace them with.

It would be comforting to review the equally horrendous events of the CH-46 debut in Vietnam, complete with doomsday forecasts, etc. Were that nothing more than the same for Osprey now, but my fears continue that the concept/design may be against the wall.