thedrifter
07-01-07, 06:44 AM
Despite setbacks, criticism, V-22 set to enter service
After lengthy setbacks and amid criticism, Pentagon says revolutionary aircraft is prepared for Iraq mission
02:10 AM CDT on Sunday, July 1, 2007
By GREGG JONES / The Dallas Morning News
gjones@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/07-07/0701v22.jpg
After more than two decades and $22 billion in taxpayer support, the Pentagon's revolutionary helicopter-airplane hybrid will fly into combat this fall in Iraq, armed with just one rear-mounted machine gun that critics warn leaves the aircraft easy prey.
In contrast, the old helicopters that the MV-22 Osprey is replacing are equipped with three machine guns, capable of countering enemy fire from all quadrants.
Marine commanders say the Osprey will save the lives of American military personnel with its turboprop speed and range. The Osprey can fly higher and faster than conventional helicopters and can refuel in flight.
The lone ramp gun on the Texas-assembled aircraft, they say, is a temporary concession to cost and engineering demands.
But, to critics, the backward-facing gun is just one of several potentially fatal flaws.
"You need to have the capability to defend yourself, and in our transport helicopters that has typically meant guns mounted forward, to the side and to the rear," said Bill Lawrence, a retired Marine colonel assigned to the Osprey program in its early years. "If you don't find a way to defend yourself, your losses will obviously increase."
A December 2006 report by the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., said the Osprey was a disaster in the making. "If deployed in combat, the price could be fatalities inflicted not just by enemy fire, but by flaws that were the result of omitted tests and basic design deficiencies pointed out but never addressed."
The Pentagon's Osprey office, the Marines and the manufacturer say the report is wrong.
"In helicopter mode, the V-22 is every bit as agile and stable as any other helicopter of its size," said Bob Leder, spokesman for Osprey contractors Bell Helicopter of Fort Worth and Boeing Helicopters, which is based in Pennsylvania. "In airplane mode, the V-22 is faster and smoother than any other helicopter in the world. In combat, 'Speed is Life.' "
All these issues could be written off as normal growing pains in the first decade of an aircraft's development, but critics say they are red flags after more than 25 years of work.
Marine Col. Mathew D. Mulhern, head of the Pentagon's V-22 program office at Patuxent River, Md., disagrees.
"It is a new technology," he said. "It is a very complex piece of machinery."
With no fallback plans, the Marines can only hope for the best.
"The Marines have had two decades to work out the bugs, and now it's time to take the next step and put this aircraft into hostile airspace," said Loren Thompson, a military expert and chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute in Washington, D.C. "Until we get it into the field, we're just not going to know whether it's as good as, inferior to or better than what the Corps is expecting."
History of the program
For the Osprey's manufacturers, the financial stakes are enormous. The program sustains the jobs of 2,500 Bell employees in the Fort Worth area, where part of the aircraft is built, and in Amarillo, where Ospreys are assembled.
But rising costs and high-profile crashes have made it one of the most controversial programs in military procurement history.
In 1986, a single Osprey was supposed to sell for $24 million. The current price is more than $80 million each, including development costs. The Pentagon's V-22 office says the cost of each MV-22, as the Marine version is called, has dropped to $68.6 million, while the CV-22, the Air Force special operations model, is $86 million.
The Bell-Boeing partnership is building variations of the Osprey for the Navy and Air Force. But the Marines are the program's biggest customer: They've signed on to buy 360 Ospreys to carry troops into combat and evacuate the wounded, replacing antiquated CH-46E and CH-53D helicopters.
Some of the criticism comes with the territory for a groundbreaking aircraft "that really could change the way we wage warfare," said Dr. Thompson.
That was how the V-22 was envisioned when talk of a tiltrotor troop transport gathered momentum in the late 1970s. By then, the Marines' Vietnam-era CH-46 and CH-53 transport helicopters were showing their age. The botched 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran underscored their limitations: Two helicopters broke down in a sandstorm and another one clipped a C-130 transport and crashed.
Bell convinced the Marines it had an answer to the Iran failure.
"The mantra was if we had the V-22 the Iran raid wouldn't have failed," said Mr. Lawrence, a decorated Marine helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War.
The Marines assigned Mr. Lawrence to Bell's tilt-rotor research effort, and in 1979 he became the first military pilot to fly the company's XV-15, a small Osprey forerunner.
In 1983, the Marines signed a contract with Bell and Boeing to develop a tilt-rotor aircraft. Design work on the V-22 got under way with one guiding principle, Mr. Lawrence recalled: "We tried to cram every new technology into that aircraft."
It was going to be the first all-composite aircraft, virtually invisible to enemy radar. The flight control system was to be fully computerized, with video-game display screens replacing traditional cockpit gauges. And, to make the Osprey as responsive as a jet fighter to a pilot's touch, the standard helicopter hydraulics system – the aviation equivalent of power steering – would be upgraded to a high-pressure system using lightweight, and very expensive, titanium tubes.
A state-of-the-art nose gun would allow the Osprey to eliminate landing zone threats. A pressurized cabin would enable troops to travel in comfort at high altitudes.
With the Pentagon picking up the tab, Mr. Lawrence recalled, the attitude was "who cares how much it costs?"
Troubled start
In March 1989, the first V-22 prototype took to the skies. But soon the Osprey was in trouble. George Bush, elected president the previous year, ordered his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, to cut spending. Mr. Cheney marked the costly V-22 for elimination.
By 1992, presidential politics had silenced such talk. With votes at stake in Texas and Pennsylvania, Mr. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, both vowed to build the Osprey.
But the Osprey's near-death experience created new pressures on Bell-Boeing and the Marines to keep costs down, at a time when the contractors already were struggling with technical and manufacturing problems. In 1991, Boeing test pilot Grady Wilson survived a V-22 crash that hinted at the problems. Investigators found the flight control system had been incorrectly wired.
The following year, an Osprey crashed into the Potomac River, killing four Boeing employees and three Marines. Investigators blamed the accident on an engine compartment fire caused by a leaking gearbox, and the Osprey was grounded for 11 months.
Political and budget pressures forced further cuts. The all-composite airframe already had been scrapped in favor of a less expensive metal-composite structure. Plans for the nose gun and pressurized cabin also were set aside.
By 2000, the Osprey appeared to have survived its hardest years. But then in April, a V-22 crashed during an Arizona training exercise, killing 19 Marines. The Marines quickly concluded that pilot error was to blame, and Osprey flights resumed.
In December 2000, an Osprey was on a test flight over eastern North Carolina when a leak in the hydraulics system crippled an engine. Eight times the pilot tried to reset the flight control computer to compensate for the dead engine, without success. The Osprey plunged 1,600 feet into a forest, killing the crew of four Marines.
Soon afterward, an anonymous V-22 mechanic released an audio recording in which the Marines' Osprey squadron commander was heard pressuring mechanics to conceal problems.
"The Marines really wanted this," said Gordon Adams, a defense expert and scholar. "They pushed very hard to have the testing program move swiftly."
Lee Gaillard, an ex-Marine and author of the critical Center for Defense Information report, says the crashes revealed a disturbing truth about the V-22.
"Two things drove the testing for years: schedule and money," he said. "That's why they omitted key tests that shouldn't have been omitted, and they substituted easier tests for more difficult tests."
James Darcy, spokesman for the Pentagon's V-22 program office, says all that changed after the 2000 crashes.
"This program since then has had more oversight, both internally and externally, arguably, than any other program in history," he said.
The 'new' V-22
Bell-Boeing and the Marines say the V-22 has been redesigned since the 2000 crashes and is a better aircraft. On Sept. 28, 2005, a Pentagon board concurred, approving the Osprey for full-rate production.
Critics, including former Pentagon weapons testers, say the Pentagon lowered the bar to ensure the V-22 achieved the milestone.
For example, during the 2005 Pentagon operational evaluation of the Osprey, 59 percent of the planned nighttime ship tests were omitted, and none was conducted with the standard number of aircraft on deck, according to the Pentagon's analysis.
"Part of the problem with this aircraft now is a lot of the testing you would think would have been done hasn't been done," Mr. Lawrence said.
Skeptics also question the Pentagon's conclusion that the problems that caused the crashes in 2000 have been resolved. They point to an incident in March 2006 in which a V-22 undergoing maintenance suddenly took off by itself, rose about 6 feet in the air and then slammed back to the ground.
"The software problem obviously has not been corrected," Mr. Gaillard said.
Mr. Darcy says the accident had nothing to do with the software glitch.
"It was simply two wires that were accidentally crossed during the maintenance of the aircraft," the V-22 program spokesman said.
In December 2006, an Osprey experienced a fire in an engine compartment less than a minute after landing at the Marine Corps air station at New River. Investigators concluded a ruptured hydraulic fluid tube caused the fire, and design changes are being made to correct the problem, Mr. Darcy said.
"From an engineering point of view, you would have thought they would have solved some of these problems years ago," said Philip Coyle, chief weapons tester at the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001, and now a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information.
The 2005 Pentagon evaluation report that judged the Osprey effective in operations cited several flaws with the aircraft. Among them was cramped seating space in a cabin that is supposed to carry 24 combat-equipped Marines.
"If you try to put 24 Marines with all their gear in it, it's tough to make them fit," Mr. Coyle said. "I don't think they do fit."
The report also noted the MV-22's lack of defensive armament, a deficiency that the Marines and Bell-Boeing have addressed by mounting a 7.62 mm machine gun alongside the rear ramp. The gun can be fired only when the ramp is open, and covers a limited field of fire to the rear and side – a solution that concerns some Marines and provokes ridicule among critics.
Other concerns raised by the Pentagon report include a restricted view from the cabin that "limits the ability of the crew chief to keep a safe lookout" during landing and buckling on ship decks caused by the Osprey's engine exhaust heat.
Iraq's heat and sand will pose additional challenges. The aircraft experienced "frequent part and system failures" in Air Force tests in the New Mexico desert last summer, a report by the Pentagon's operational testing directorate noted in January.
Another critical question is whether the Osprey can descend and maneuver fast enough under fire.
At high descent rates with low forward speed, the V-22 and conventional helicopters are susceptible to "vortex ring state," a sudden loss of lift. When the V-22 encounters the phenomenon – as it did in the 2000 Arizona crash – it flips. Critics say flight restrictions placed on Osprey pilots to avoid vortex ring state will prevent the evasive action that helicopters can perform under fire.
"There is no maneuverability," said Harry Dunn, a retired Army colonel who has flown about 30 different helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. "From a combat pilot's viewpoint, it is not a safe aircraft."
Mr. Leder, the Bell-Boeing spokesman, says the Osprey is both safe and maneuverable.
"The Osprey has been proven ... to be significantly safer in rapid descents into landing zones than any of the helicopters it will replace, and the only people saying otherwise have never sat in the cockpit of this aircraft or bothered to seek the opinions of the men and women who have," he said in an e-mail response to questions.
Osprey pilots contend the V-22 is actually less susceptible to vortex ring state than conventional helicopters. While acknowledging that the CH-46 is more nimble than an MV-22 in helicopter mode, Osprey pilots say their turboprop speed and quieter approach heading into a landing area will limit exposure to enemy fire.
"How can that not be a better option or scenario for a flying pilot in a combat situation?" said Capt. Drew "Hobbit" Norris, 29, of Plano, an Osprey pilot with the first V-22 combat squadron, known as Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, or VMM-263.
Destination: Iraq
At the Marine Corps Air Station New River at Jacksonville, N.C., the 25 pilots of VMM-263 are polishing their combat tactics, while maintenance experts such as Sgt. Melissa Hudson, 26, of Ballinger, Texas, are learning how to keep the complicated aircraft flying. The Thunder Chickens, as the squadron is known, have spent weeks in western deserts learning to fly the Osprey in treacherous brownout conditions.
"It's becoming safer and safer with every software change, every physical change to the aircraft," said 1st Lt. John Sax, 28, of Memphis, Tenn.
In exercises such as a mock airfield assault along the North Carolina coast this spring, Thunder Chicken pilots familiarized wary Marines with their new ride.
As a stiff breeze blew off the ocean, six Marines acting as enemy combatants lounged alongside rusty anti-aircraft guns at an old World War II base. Pvt. Randon Cramer, 20, of Marshall, Mo., was curious to see the Osprey in action but not eager to fly in one.
"Heard a lot of weird things about them," he said.
Shortly after 1 p.m., four Ospreys swept over the piney woods with little warning and settled onto a runway. Boyish-looking Marines scrambled down the rear ramps of each aircraft and quickly set up a defensive perimeter.
Within a minute, the Ospreys lifted off the tarmac, tilted the twin engine compartments forward into airplane mode and roared off over the treetops.
Afterward, the Marines who carried out the assault gave the Osprey generally favorable reviews.
Lance Cpl. Harris Turner, a 22-year-old from Bunkie, La., who expects to deploy to Iraq in September, said the Osprey "is definitely a lot smoother, a lot more quiet, a faster ride." But it also feels "a lot smaller. We had 10 in there. It feels like you're sitting on top of each other's lap."
He and his buddies sweated the flight, he said, "thinking it might go down."
Lance Cpl. Jimmy Rytlewski, 21, of Tampa, Fla., likes the Osprey's speed but is concerned by its light armament – a sentiment shared by others.
"I wouldn't want to go into a hot landing zone" in the Osprey, said Lance Cpl. Michael Hall, a 20-year-old from Sharptown, Md., "but if you just need to get somewhere and go, I'd rather take that."
The Marine pilots assigned to fly the Osprey into combat say they're ready to prove their critics wrong.
Capt. Norris, a graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas and Texas A&M University, flew CH-46s in Iraq before making the transition to V-22s last year.
Burned in his memory is the Marine with a head wound whom he evacuated from Ramadi to a hospital in downtown Baghdad. It was a 23-minute flight in a CH-46. An Osprey shaves that time by half, he said, "and that could save a Marine's life."
Ellie
After lengthy setbacks and amid criticism, Pentagon says revolutionary aircraft is prepared for Iraq mission
02:10 AM CDT on Sunday, July 1, 2007
By GREGG JONES / The Dallas Morning News
gjones@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/07-07/0701v22.jpg
After more than two decades and $22 billion in taxpayer support, the Pentagon's revolutionary helicopter-airplane hybrid will fly into combat this fall in Iraq, armed with just one rear-mounted machine gun that critics warn leaves the aircraft easy prey.
In contrast, the old helicopters that the MV-22 Osprey is replacing are equipped with three machine guns, capable of countering enemy fire from all quadrants.
Marine commanders say the Osprey will save the lives of American military personnel with its turboprop speed and range. The Osprey can fly higher and faster than conventional helicopters and can refuel in flight.
The lone ramp gun on the Texas-assembled aircraft, they say, is a temporary concession to cost and engineering demands.
But, to critics, the backward-facing gun is just one of several potentially fatal flaws.
"You need to have the capability to defend yourself, and in our transport helicopters that has typically meant guns mounted forward, to the side and to the rear," said Bill Lawrence, a retired Marine colonel assigned to the Osprey program in its early years. "If you don't find a way to defend yourself, your losses will obviously increase."
A December 2006 report by the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., said the Osprey was a disaster in the making. "If deployed in combat, the price could be fatalities inflicted not just by enemy fire, but by flaws that were the result of omitted tests and basic design deficiencies pointed out but never addressed."
The Pentagon's Osprey office, the Marines and the manufacturer say the report is wrong.
"In helicopter mode, the V-22 is every bit as agile and stable as any other helicopter of its size," said Bob Leder, spokesman for Osprey contractors Bell Helicopter of Fort Worth and Boeing Helicopters, which is based in Pennsylvania. "In airplane mode, the V-22 is faster and smoother than any other helicopter in the world. In combat, 'Speed is Life.' "
All these issues could be written off as normal growing pains in the first decade of an aircraft's development, but critics say they are red flags after more than 25 years of work.
Marine Col. Mathew D. Mulhern, head of the Pentagon's V-22 program office at Patuxent River, Md., disagrees.
"It is a new technology," he said. "It is a very complex piece of machinery."
With no fallback plans, the Marines can only hope for the best.
"The Marines have had two decades to work out the bugs, and now it's time to take the next step and put this aircraft into hostile airspace," said Loren Thompson, a military expert and chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute in Washington, D.C. "Until we get it into the field, we're just not going to know whether it's as good as, inferior to or better than what the Corps is expecting."
History of the program
For the Osprey's manufacturers, the financial stakes are enormous. The program sustains the jobs of 2,500 Bell employees in the Fort Worth area, where part of the aircraft is built, and in Amarillo, where Ospreys are assembled.
But rising costs and high-profile crashes have made it one of the most controversial programs in military procurement history.
In 1986, a single Osprey was supposed to sell for $24 million. The current price is more than $80 million each, including development costs. The Pentagon's V-22 office says the cost of each MV-22, as the Marine version is called, has dropped to $68.6 million, while the CV-22, the Air Force special operations model, is $86 million.
The Bell-Boeing partnership is building variations of the Osprey for the Navy and Air Force. But the Marines are the program's biggest customer: They've signed on to buy 360 Ospreys to carry troops into combat and evacuate the wounded, replacing antiquated CH-46E and CH-53D helicopters.
Some of the criticism comes with the territory for a groundbreaking aircraft "that really could change the way we wage warfare," said Dr. Thompson.
That was how the V-22 was envisioned when talk of a tiltrotor troop transport gathered momentum in the late 1970s. By then, the Marines' Vietnam-era CH-46 and CH-53 transport helicopters were showing their age. The botched 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran underscored their limitations: Two helicopters broke down in a sandstorm and another one clipped a C-130 transport and crashed.
Bell convinced the Marines it had an answer to the Iran failure.
"The mantra was if we had the V-22 the Iran raid wouldn't have failed," said Mr. Lawrence, a decorated Marine helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War.
The Marines assigned Mr. Lawrence to Bell's tilt-rotor research effort, and in 1979 he became the first military pilot to fly the company's XV-15, a small Osprey forerunner.
In 1983, the Marines signed a contract with Bell and Boeing to develop a tilt-rotor aircraft. Design work on the V-22 got under way with one guiding principle, Mr. Lawrence recalled: "We tried to cram every new technology into that aircraft."
It was going to be the first all-composite aircraft, virtually invisible to enemy radar. The flight control system was to be fully computerized, with video-game display screens replacing traditional cockpit gauges. And, to make the Osprey as responsive as a jet fighter to a pilot's touch, the standard helicopter hydraulics system – the aviation equivalent of power steering – would be upgraded to a high-pressure system using lightweight, and very expensive, titanium tubes.
A state-of-the-art nose gun would allow the Osprey to eliminate landing zone threats. A pressurized cabin would enable troops to travel in comfort at high altitudes.
With the Pentagon picking up the tab, Mr. Lawrence recalled, the attitude was "who cares how much it costs?"
Troubled start
In March 1989, the first V-22 prototype took to the skies. But soon the Osprey was in trouble. George Bush, elected president the previous year, ordered his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, to cut spending. Mr. Cheney marked the costly V-22 for elimination.
By 1992, presidential politics had silenced such talk. With votes at stake in Texas and Pennsylvania, Mr. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, both vowed to build the Osprey.
But the Osprey's near-death experience created new pressures on Bell-Boeing and the Marines to keep costs down, at a time when the contractors already were struggling with technical and manufacturing problems. In 1991, Boeing test pilot Grady Wilson survived a V-22 crash that hinted at the problems. Investigators found the flight control system had been incorrectly wired.
The following year, an Osprey crashed into the Potomac River, killing four Boeing employees and three Marines. Investigators blamed the accident on an engine compartment fire caused by a leaking gearbox, and the Osprey was grounded for 11 months.
Political and budget pressures forced further cuts. The all-composite airframe already had been scrapped in favor of a less expensive metal-composite structure. Plans for the nose gun and pressurized cabin also were set aside.
By 2000, the Osprey appeared to have survived its hardest years. But then in April, a V-22 crashed during an Arizona training exercise, killing 19 Marines. The Marines quickly concluded that pilot error was to blame, and Osprey flights resumed.
In December 2000, an Osprey was on a test flight over eastern North Carolina when a leak in the hydraulics system crippled an engine. Eight times the pilot tried to reset the flight control computer to compensate for the dead engine, without success. The Osprey plunged 1,600 feet into a forest, killing the crew of four Marines.
Soon afterward, an anonymous V-22 mechanic released an audio recording in which the Marines' Osprey squadron commander was heard pressuring mechanics to conceal problems.
"The Marines really wanted this," said Gordon Adams, a defense expert and scholar. "They pushed very hard to have the testing program move swiftly."
Lee Gaillard, an ex-Marine and author of the critical Center for Defense Information report, says the crashes revealed a disturbing truth about the V-22.
"Two things drove the testing for years: schedule and money," he said. "That's why they omitted key tests that shouldn't have been omitted, and they substituted easier tests for more difficult tests."
James Darcy, spokesman for the Pentagon's V-22 program office, says all that changed after the 2000 crashes.
"This program since then has had more oversight, both internally and externally, arguably, than any other program in history," he said.
The 'new' V-22
Bell-Boeing and the Marines say the V-22 has been redesigned since the 2000 crashes and is a better aircraft. On Sept. 28, 2005, a Pentagon board concurred, approving the Osprey for full-rate production.
Critics, including former Pentagon weapons testers, say the Pentagon lowered the bar to ensure the V-22 achieved the milestone.
For example, during the 2005 Pentagon operational evaluation of the Osprey, 59 percent of the planned nighttime ship tests were omitted, and none was conducted with the standard number of aircraft on deck, according to the Pentagon's analysis.
"Part of the problem with this aircraft now is a lot of the testing you would think would have been done hasn't been done," Mr. Lawrence said.
Skeptics also question the Pentagon's conclusion that the problems that caused the crashes in 2000 have been resolved. They point to an incident in March 2006 in which a V-22 undergoing maintenance suddenly took off by itself, rose about 6 feet in the air and then slammed back to the ground.
"The software problem obviously has not been corrected," Mr. Gaillard said.
Mr. Darcy says the accident had nothing to do with the software glitch.
"It was simply two wires that were accidentally crossed during the maintenance of the aircraft," the V-22 program spokesman said.
In December 2006, an Osprey experienced a fire in an engine compartment less than a minute after landing at the Marine Corps air station at New River. Investigators concluded a ruptured hydraulic fluid tube caused the fire, and design changes are being made to correct the problem, Mr. Darcy said.
"From an engineering point of view, you would have thought they would have solved some of these problems years ago," said Philip Coyle, chief weapons tester at the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001, and now a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information.
The 2005 Pentagon evaluation report that judged the Osprey effective in operations cited several flaws with the aircraft. Among them was cramped seating space in a cabin that is supposed to carry 24 combat-equipped Marines.
"If you try to put 24 Marines with all their gear in it, it's tough to make them fit," Mr. Coyle said. "I don't think they do fit."
The report also noted the MV-22's lack of defensive armament, a deficiency that the Marines and Bell-Boeing have addressed by mounting a 7.62 mm machine gun alongside the rear ramp. The gun can be fired only when the ramp is open, and covers a limited field of fire to the rear and side – a solution that concerns some Marines and provokes ridicule among critics.
Other concerns raised by the Pentagon report include a restricted view from the cabin that "limits the ability of the crew chief to keep a safe lookout" during landing and buckling on ship decks caused by the Osprey's engine exhaust heat.
Iraq's heat and sand will pose additional challenges. The aircraft experienced "frequent part and system failures" in Air Force tests in the New Mexico desert last summer, a report by the Pentagon's operational testing directorate noted in January.
Another critical question is whether the Osprey can descend and maneuver fast enough under fire.
At high descent rates with low forward speed, the V-22 and conventional helicopters are susceptible to "vortex ring state," a sudden loss of lift. When the V-22 encounters the phenomenon – as it did in the 2000 Arizona crash – it flips. Critics say flight restrictions placed on Osprey pilots to avoid vortex ring state will prevent the evasive action that helicopters can perform under fire.
"There is no maneuverability," said Harry Dunn, a retired Army colonel who has flown about 30 different helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. "From a combat pilot's viewpoint, it is not a safe aircraft."
Mr. Leder, the Bell-Boeing spokesman, says the Osprey is both safe and maneuverable.
"The Osprey has been proven ... to be significantly safer in rapid descents into landing zones than any of the helicopters it will replace, and the only people saying otherwise have never sat in the cockpit of this aircraft or bothered to seek the opinions of the men and women who have," he said in an e-mail response to questions.
Osprey pilots contend the V-22 is actually less susceptible to vortex ring state than conventional helicopters. While acknowledging that the CH-46 is more nimble than an MV-22 in helicopter mode, Osprey pilots say their turboprop speed and quieter approach heading into a landing area will limit exposure to enemy fire.
"How can that not be a better option or scenario for a flying pilot in a combat situation?" said Capt. Drew "Hobbit" Norris, 29, of Plano, an Osprey pilot with the first V-22 combat squadron, known as Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, or VMM-263.
Destination: Iraq
At the Marine Corps Air Station New River at Jacksonville, N.C., the 25 pilots of VMM-263 are polishing their combat tactics, while maintenance experts such as Sgt. Melissa Hudson, 26, of Ballinger, Texas, are learning how to keep the complicated aircraft flying. The Thunder Chickens, as the squadron is known, have spent weeks in western deserts learning to fly the Osprey in treacherous brownout conditions.
"It's becoming safer and safer with every software change, every physical change to the aircraft," said 1st Lt. John Sax, 28, of Memphis, Tenn.
In exercises such as a mock airfield assault along the North Carolina coast this spring, Thunder Chicken pilots familiarized wary Marines with their new ride.
As a stiff breeze blew off the ocean, six Marines acting as enemy combatants lounged alongside rusty anti-aircraft guns at an old World War II base. Pvt. Randon Cramer, 20, of Marshall, Mo., was curious to see the Osprey in action but not eager to fly in one.
"Heard a lot of weird things about them," he said.
Shortly after 1 p.m., four Ospreys swept over the piney woods with little warning and settled onto a runway. Boyish-looking Marines scrambled down the rear ramps of each aircraft and quickly set up a defensive perimeter.
Within a minute, the Ospreys lifted off the tarmac, tilted the twin engine compartments forward into airplane mode and roared off over the treetops.
Afterward, the Marines who carried out the assault gave the Osprey generally favorable reviews.
Lance Cpl. Harris Turner, a 22-year-old from Bunkie, La., who expects to deploy to Iraq in September, said the Osprey "is definitely a lot smoother, a lot more quiet, a faster ride." But it also feels "a lot smaller. We had 10 in there. It feels like you're sitting on top of each other's lap."
He and his buddies sweated the flight, he said, "thinking it might go down."
Lance Cpl. Jimmy Rytlewski, 21, of Tampa, Fla., likes the Osprey's speed but is concerned by its light armament – a sentiment shared by others.
"I wouldn't want to go into a hot landing zone" in the Osprey, said Lance Cpl. Michael Hall, a 20-year-old from Sharptown, Md., "but if you just need to get somewhere and go, I'd rather take that."
The Marine pilots assigned to fly the Osprey into combat say they're ready to prove their critics wrong.
Capt. Norris, a graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas and Texas A&M University, flew CH-46s in Iraq before making the transition to V-22s last year.
Burned in his memory is the Marine with a head wound whom he evacuated from Ramadi to a hospital in downtown Baghdad. It was a 23-minute flight in a CH-46. An Osprey shaves that time by half, he said, "and that could save a Marine's life."
Ellie