thedrifter
09-12-04, 06:35 AM
09-07-2004
Guest Column: A Plan to Save the V-22 Osprey
By Rich Riccioni
The Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft remains in a sea of controversy more than two decades after it began engineering development in the mid-1980s.
The biggest crisis occurred four years ago in 2000, a disastrous accident–riddled year in which premature operational testing took place. During the ensuing yearlong moratorium on flight test, the Marine Corps declared all the problems “resolved,” and the Osprey tilt-rotor is once again in development flight test to establish its safety, and to demonstrate that it is the proper aircraft for the differing missions of the U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy.
A major purpose of this article is to speed the V-22’s transition from the seemingly interminable flight test to its proper place in the various services. During development tests, V-22s were slowly and steadily produced at a limited rate of initial production (LRIP) – approximately 10 per year. Ten aircraft are test vehicles, while some 35 merely lie fallow awaiting final validation and minor modification – the result of LRIP.
But the 35 fallow aircraft are flyable and deemed airworthy by the Navy V-22 System Program Office. More than that, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England and the former System Project Office commander, Marine Colonel Dan Schultz, have long proclaimed all the problems resolved and the V–22 again ready for operational testing. Boeing officials believe this as well.
Before his recent retirement, Pentagon acquisition czar Pete Aldridge – once forthright and very circumspect of the aircraft – demanded a complete, intensive test program. But, strangely, after a casual review of the program, he precipitously reversed his ground and declared that the aircraft had passed its tests and was now ready for operations and full-scale production. Aldridge then abruptly retired in May 2003 and went to work for the defense industry with the Lockheed Corp.
A central question addressed here is finding a proper use for the 35 Osprey aircraft that are still lying fallow – which will soon become 45 aircraft, and then 55 aircraft, etc., as the production line continues to crank them out. Each aircraft costs the U.S. taxpayer more than $80 million, roughly three to five times the cost of modern helicopters. These are expensive assets, too expensive to be wasted.
A pantheon of pundits (the country’s leading experts on vertical lift aircraft) was convened by Dr. Henry McDonald, Director of NASA Ames in 2002. They concluded that tilt-rotor aircraft that rise vertically in the helicopter mode and fly horizontally in a propeller airplane mode (combining the traits – both positive and negative – of helicopters with those of airplanes into a single versatile aircraft), are the wave of the future for short-distance transportation in both the military and the commercial world. They declared the engineering problems to be fully understood and resolved.
Previously, during the hiatus in testing, a “Blue Ribbon Committee” had explored the Osprey and declared the concept viable and the aircraft fixable.
The once feared and generally mal-understood “vortex ring state” (VRS) that caused at least one lethal accident has been fully explored by a competent and very experienced Boeing test pilot. His presentation at the International Symposium of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots fully defined the altitude and speed boundaries of the dangerous domain of VRS, and established its dangers. By proclamation, VRS is not a serious threat to the Marine Corps. Can one disagree with this spectacular array of experts?
Our valorous Marines have been lusting to bring the aircraft into service lo these many decades. The Marine Corps desires 350 Ospreys – the Air Force and Navy will each acquire 50. Air Force and Marine generals have testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee proclaiming its stellar capabilities and great relevance to the new forms of warfare. Then-Marine Commandant General James Jones and his wife, Diane, even flew in a test Osprey as a dramatic display of his complete faith in the aircraft.
In expressing their larger faith, Marines and other V-22 advocates continually invoke two incantations: First, “It carries three times as much, flies twice as fast, and five times as far,” and second, “It is more maintainable, more survivable, and more deployable. Yet curiously, seemingly inexplicably, the V–22 is still being tested to fully establish its nature and its readiness to serve the three military services.
Not everyone agrees with the above rosy depiction of the Osprey and its development. A formal Operational Test and Evaluation (OPEVAL 2000), conducted by Marine pilots for the competent Dr. Phil Coyle, Director of Military Test and Evaluation (DOTE), revealed many serious shortcomings of the aircraft. It generated comparative data with the CH-53.
I completed an 18–month study under contract to the Air Force in 2002 (“The CV-22, Impact of Performance on Cost Effectiveness”) that culminated in an intense, complete, and definitive 120-page report, gorged with facts born of unique analyses, with corroborative quantification, and graphical representation.
The study compared the Osprey with four helicopter models – two old and two new. The report was briefed to the Department of Defense (DOT&E), and to the highest levels in the Air Force. Its facts, numbers, and conclusions are in direct opposition to the vacuous opinions of many pundits. The Osprey was found to be a very ineffective and inefficient vehicle for the fundamental Marine mission of carrying combat Marines and war materiel from ship to shore in littoral combat operations.
The Osprey is and will remain a dangerous aircraft for many reasons, especially in combat. When compared with modern helicopters, it is grossly deficient. It is not only less effective, it is also much less cost-effective. The complete report proves (it provides not opinions but proofs) that the Osprey would be less effective and much less survivable in combat operations.
The tilt-rotor concept is basically flawed. It is interesting, but flawed. The Osprey’s complexity combined with poor engineering make it much more difficult to maintain and hence less reliable. The Osprey, if flown at its high optimum altitudes (circa 25,000 feet) is indeed faster by a factor of two relative to helicopters that normally fly below 15,000 feet. But in the fundamental Marine mission – attack From the sea –a mission transporting men and war materiel from ship to shore and return at very low altitudes, much less time is spent flying than in loading, unloading, and repairing the Osprey. Zero speed averages badly (time-wise) with flight speeds forcing its speed advantage into the domain of diminishing returns. Its greater speed never makes up for its low readiness rate.
Already, the Osprey’s inherent lack of reliability led to a celebrated court-martial when Marine officers in the Corps’ first Osprey squadron forced alteration of its maintenance records. The Air Force meanwhile has had to give up a primary mission for the Osprey – search and rescue of downed pilots (SAR) – because of the deleterious effects of the Osprey’s inherently high-speed rotor downwash.
The Navy, meanwhile, has become sufficiently disenchanted to consider not funding its 50 Ospreys. Many of the testimonials of general officers made to the SASC were total distortions. Some defy the laws of physics and aerodynamics; others contradict official U.S. Navy data (NATOPS).
For those sufficiently interested to read my detailed report or accept its condensation, it will be clear that either the defense establishment (the services, the pundits, and NASA are correct), or I am. There is no middle ground! The reader of the report must decide.
So now there are two issues. First, what can be done to establish the truth about the aircraft? And second, how may the airframes lying fallow be fruitfully used?
Fortunately these problems have a simple, pragmatic, synergistic resolution, useful in establishing the facts, and in helping speed the validation of the Osprey for the military services.
continued..........
Guest Column: A Plan to Save the V-22 Osprey
By Rich Riccioni
The Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft remains in a sea of controversy more than two decades after it began engineering development in the mid-1980s.
The biggest crisis occurred four years ago in 2000, a disastrous accident–riddled year in which premature operational testing took place. During the ensuing yearlong moratorium on flight test, the Marine Corps declared all the problems “resolved,” and the Osprey tilt-rotor is once again in development flight test to establish its safety, and to demonstrate that it is the proper aircraft for the differing missions of the U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy.
A major purpose of this article is to speed the V-22’s transition from the seemingly interminable flight test to its proper place in the various services. During development tests, V-22s were slowly and steadily produced at a limited rate of initial production (LRIP) – approximately 10 per year. Ten aircraft are test vehicles, while some 35 merely lie fallow awaiting final validation and minor modification – the result of LRIP.
But the 35 fallow aircraft are flyable and deemed airworthy by the Navy V-22 System Program Office. More than that, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England and the former System Project Office commander, Marine Colonel Dan Schultz, have long proclaimed all the problems resolved and the V–22 again ready for operational testing. Boeing officials believe this as well.
Before his recent retirement, Pentagon acquisition czar Pete Aldridge – once forthright and very circumspect of the aircraft – demanded a complete, intensive test program. But, strangely, after a casual review of the program, he precipitously reversed his ground and declared that the aircraft had passed its tests and was now ready for operations and full-scale production. Aldridge then abruptly retired in May 2003 and went to work for the defense industry with the Lockheed Corp.
A central question addressed here is finding a proper use for the 35 Osprey aircraft that are still lying fallow – which will soon become 45 aircraft, and then 55 aircraft, etc., as the production line continues to crank them out. Each aircraft costs the U.S. taxpayer more than $80 million, roughly three to five times the cost of modern helicopters. These are expensive assets, too expensive to be wasted.
A pantheon of pundits (the country’s leading experts on vertical lift aircraft) was convened by Dr. Henry McDonald, Director of NASA Ames in 2002. They concluded that tilt-rotor aircraft that rise vertically in the helicopter mode and fly horizontally in a propeller airplane mode (combining the traits – both positive and negative – of helicopters with those of airplanes into a single versatile aircraft), are the wave of the future for short-distance transportation in both the military and the commercial world. They declared the engineering problems to be fully understood and resolved.
Previously, during the hiatus in testing, a “Blue Ribbon Committee” had explored the Osprey and declared the concept viable and the aircraft fixable.
The once feared and generally mal-understood “vortex ring state” (VRS) that caused at least one lethal accident has been fully explored by a competent and very experienced Boeing test pilot. His presentation at the International Symposium of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots fully defined the altitude and speed boundaries of the dangerous domain of VRS, and established its dangers. By proclamation, VRS is not a serious threat to the Marine Corps. Can one disagree with this spectacular array of experts?
Our valorous Marines have been lusting to bring the aircraft into service lo these many decades. The Marine Corps desires 350 Ospreys – the Air Force and Navy will each acquire 50. Air Force and Marine generals have testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee proclaiming its stellar capabilities and great relevance to the new forms of warfare. Then-Marine Commandant General James Jones and his wife, Diane, even flew in a test Osprey as a dramatic display of his complete faith in the aircraft.
In expressing their larger faith, Marines and other V-22 advocates continually invoke two incantations: First, “It carries three times as much, flies twice as fast, and five times as far,” and second, “It is more maintainable, more survivable, and more deployable. Yet curiously, seemingly inexplicably, the V–22 is still being tested to fully establish its nature and its readiness to serve the three military services.
Not everyone agrees with the above rosy depiction of the Osprey and its development. A formal Operational Test and Evaluation (OPEVAL 2000), conducted by Marine pilots for the competent Dr. Phil Coyle, Director of Military Test and Evaluation (DOTE), revealed many serious shortcomings of the aircraft. It generated comparative data with the CH-53.
I completed an 18–month study under contract to the Air Force in 2002 (“The CV-22, Impact of Performance on Cost Effectiveness”) that culminated in an intense, complete, and definitive 120-page report, gorged with facts born of unique analyses, with corroborative quantification, and graphical representation.
The study compared the Osprey with four helicopter models – two old and two new. The report was briefed to the Department of Defense (DOT&E), and to the highest levels in the Air Force. Its facts, numbers, and conclusions are in direct opposition to the vacuous opinions of many pundits. The Osprey was found to be a very ineffective and inefficient vehicle for the fundamental Marine mission of carrying combat Marines and war materiel from ship to shore in littoral combat operations.
The Osprey is and will remain a dangerous aircraft for many reasons, especially in combat. When compared with modern helicopters, it is grossly deficient. It is not only less effective, it is also much less cost-effective. The complete report proves (it provides not opinions but proofs) that the Osprey would be less effective and much less survivable in combat operations.
The tilt-rotor concept is basically flawed. It is interesting, but flawed. The Osprey’s complexity combined with poor engineering make it much more difficult to maintain and hence less reliable. The Osprey, if flown at its high optimum altitudes (circa 25,000 feet) is indeed faster by a factor of two relative to helicopters that normally fly below 15,000 feet. But in the fundamental Marine mission – attack From the sea –a mission transporting men and war materiel from ship to shore and return at very low altitudes, much less time is spent flying than in loading, unloading, and repairing the Osprey. Zero speed averages badly (time-wise) with flight speeds forcing its speed advantage into the domain of diminishing returns. Its greater speed never makes up for its low readiness rate.
Already, the Osprey’s inherent lack of reliability led to a celebrated court-martial when Marine officers in the Corps’ first Osprey squadron forced alteration of its maintenance records. The Air Force meanwhile has had to give up a primary mission for the Osprey – search and rescue of downed pilots (SAR) – because of the deleterious effects of the Osprey’s inherently high-speed rotor downwash.
The Navy, meanwhile, has become sufficiently disenchanted to consider not funding its 50 Ospreys. Many of the testimonials of general officers made to the SASC were total distortions. Some defy the laws of physics and aerodynamics; others contradict official U.S. Navy data (NATOPS).
For those sufficiently interested to read my detailed report or accept its condensation, it will be clear that either the defense establishment (the services, the pundits, and NASA are correct), or I am. There is no middle ground! The reader of the report must decide.
So now there are two issues. First, what can be done to establish the truth about the aircraft? And second, how may the airframes lying fallow be fruitfully used?
Fortunately these problems have a simple, pragmatic, synergistic resolution, useful in establishing the facts, and in helping speed the validation of the Osprey for the military services.
continued..........