Ospreys grounded

[thedrifter]

Ospreys grounded

By Trista Talton - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Feb 9, 2007 9:45:50 EST

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — The Marine Corps’ fleet of MV-22 Ospreys has been temporarily grounded after a fault caused by a computer chip in the flight control computers was discovered during pre-flight testing at a Bell Boeing facility.

“It is one computer chip on one computer card on one of the flight computers that may be faulty,” Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine Corps spokesman at Pentagon, said on Friday.

The problem was diagnosed during the pre-flight test of an Osprey at Bell Boeing’s Amarillo, Texas, facility, he said.

Ospreys are equipped with three flight control computers — a triple redundancy system in which each computer serves as a backup to the other should one of them malfunction. The chip in question is responsible for switching over to a backup computer. Testing found that, in extremely cold temperatures, the chip fails to perform that particular function.

“We only see this anomaly if the computer itself inside the avionics bay in the aircraft is below freezing,” said James Darcy, spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office at Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md. “They couldn’t reproduce the problem when the computer was at a normal temperature range. We’ve never seen this in flight.”

Flight control computers are expected to function down to minus 65 degrees, he said, adding that the computers have been “extremely reliable.”

When the Corps was informed of the faulty chip on Tuesday, headquarters sent out an informal request to halt V-22 flights. Headquarters issued a press release Friday stating that all of the Corps’ 46 Ospreys had been grounded. Most of the war birds — 42 — are based at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C. The other four are test assets at Pax River.

Each computer is being removed and sent to Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 26 at New River. Each chip must be physically examined and, before a computer is reinstalled, a full diagnostic test must be run on the computer — a process that takes about two hours, Darcy said. Three systems can be checked at one time.

Not every Osprey is equipped with the chip in question, Darcy said. That’s because the newer chips were incorporated in 2003.

“The unaffected computers will be reinstalled in aircraft and those will be cleared to fly,” Darcy said Friday. “Aircraft with unaffected [flight control computers] could be flying as early as the beginning of next week.”

This year will mark the V-22’s deployment debut, with the first operational squadron — Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 — preparing to deploy later this year. Fazekas said a decision has not been made on where the Ospreys will deploy.

This latest grounding should not affect the Osprey’s pre-deployment schedule, Fazekas said.

“We don’t’ think this is something that’s going to stop that,” he said.

Ospreys are replacing the Vietnam-era CH-46 Sea Knights. Despite the V-22’s troubled past, including four crashes since 1991, one of which killed 19 Marines on board, the hybrid aircraft promises to carry troops farther and faster than their much-older predecessor.

Last month, about 250 Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based Marines took their first flights in Ospreys as part of integration training. Each Marine received an “Osprey 101” overview of the aircraft before stepping inside for a flight.

There are two operational Osprey squadrons on the East Coast. The Corps is phasing out the third of seven Sea Knight squadrons at New River.

The West Coast transition will likely begin around late 2009 or early 2010, followed by overseas squadrons. There are six Sea Knight squadrons on the West Coast and two on Okinawa, Japan.

The Corps received 13 V-22s last year and is scheduled to receive another 12 this year.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Posted on Sat, Feb. 10, 2007

Bad chip grounds military's Ospreys
A flight-control-computer problem is the latest glitch in the V-22 aircraft, made in part in Ridley Township.
By Bob Cox
FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM


FORT WORTH, Texas - The fleet of 54 V-22 Osprey aircraft used by the Marines and Air Force was grounded this week after a faulty computer chip was found in flight-control computers.

Military officials ordered flights halted immediately after the problem was found Tuesday, a spokesman for the Navy's V-22 program office said yesterday.

Maintenance crews have begun pulling the computers from each aircraft to see which have the faulty chip. Computers will have to be removed from all the aircraft and examined.

It is the latest in a long series of maintenance and reliability problems plaguing the V-22, which has been in development for 25 years and has cost more than $20 billion. The V-22 is jointly produced by the Boeing Co. in Ridley Township, Delaware County, and Bell Helicopter Textron of Fort Worth.

Observers said the continued problems do not bode well for an aircraft that Marine generals say they intend to dispatch to a war zone this year.

"It never seems to stop," said Phil Coyle, a former Pentagon weapons-testing chief.

In early December, a hydraulic-line leak caused a fire in an engine enclosure on a V-22 that had just landed at Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, N.C. The fire could have been disastrous had it occurred minutes earlier when the aircraft was in the air.

No in-flight incidents related to the faulty computer chip have been reported, said James Darcy, a spokesman for the Naval Air Systems V-22 program office at Patuxent River, Md.

Each V-22 has a triple-redundant flight-control system - three computers operating simultaneously. If one fails, the computer chip in question is supposed to immediately detect that failure, isolate the affected computer, and direct the other two to take control of the aircraft.

The problem was detected in a routine ground start-up test of a new V-22 at the Bell assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, Darcy said. The probability of a problem occurring in flight is low, Darcy said, "but if it occurred, the consequences could be very serious."

The V-22 is a complex hybrid aircraft designed to carry troops and military cargo from bases or ships into combat zones. By rotating its wingtip-mounted turboprop engines, the aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter but fly at airplane speeds.

All the V-22s built to date use flight-control computer systems supplied by BAE Systems, Darcy said, and the chip in question is manufactured by Dallas-based Texas Instruments.

After analyzing the computer malfunction in Amarillo, engineers found that the chip reacted poorly in cold temperatures - mostly subzero temperatures, but in one instance 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Design specifications call for the computers to work at 65 degrees below zero, Darcy said. No one knows how many of the 150-plus computers installed on V-22s contain the defective chip.

Senior Marine generals have said repeatedly that they plan to deploy the first operational V-22 squadron this year, probably to Iraq or Afghanistan. Military officers are "very confident," Darcy said, that the latest problem "is not going to impact" those plans.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marine Corps Grounds V-22 Osprey Aircraft

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 10, 2007; D01

The Marine Corps said yesterday it was temporarily grounding its fleet of V-22 Osprey tilt rotors after discovering a glitch in a computer chip that could cause the aircraft to lose control.

The order affects 54 of the helicopter-airplane hybrids -- 46 owned by the Marines and eight belonging to the Air Force -- and could last weeks, Marine Corps officials said. It was an unexpected setback for the program; the military last grounded the fleet in 2000 after two fatal crashes that killed 23 Marines.

While none of the aircraft has been sent into the combat despite more than 20 years in development, the Osprey has regained support in the military in recent years. The Marine Corps expects to declare its version combat-ready this summer, and the Air Force version is expected to reach that point in early 2009.

The latest glitch should not affect those plans, said James Darcy, spokesman for the program.

The aircraft's contractors, Bell Helicopter and Boeing, notified the government of the problem on Tuesday after an onboard diagnostic computer pointed to an issue with a chip in the flight control computers, which control all of the aircraft's moving parts. Testing showed that in below-freezing temperatures, the computers could lose their redundancy features -- a safety net if one of the computers is damaged by enemy fire, according to the Marine Corps. That could cause the pilot to lose control of the aircraft.

"It's unacceptable," Darcy said. "This aircraft has to be able to go anywhere in the world." The Marine Corps wants an aircraft that can operate in temperatures as extreme as 65 degrees below zero, he said.

It is unclear how much it will cost to fix the problem, Darcy said.

"Bell and Boeing will work together to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible so the aircraft can return to flight," said Jack Satterfield, a Boeing spokesman. "We expect to be able to do that quickly."

The military plans to buy 360 of the aircraft for the Marine Corps, 50 for the Air Force and 48 for the Navy. The price per aircraft ranges from about $70 million to $89 million, excluding development costs.

Despite recent progress, including flying across the Atlantic Ocean this summer, the program continues to have its critics. "This plane has been in production for over 25 years, costs more than $100 million each, and is scheduled to go into combat this summer," said Todd Bowers, defense investigator for Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group. "I guess we are seeing the results of the extremely weak testing done on this aircraft, which is disconcerting since it will possibly be carrying troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it can't stand a little cold weather how can it handle a war zone?"

Ellie