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thedrifter
01-03-08, 08:23 AM
Is it do or die for Osprey?

Marines put criticized aircraft to test in Iraq; FW maker could gain

12:00 AM CST on Thursday, January 3, 2008


By RICHARD WHITTLE Special Correspondent Richard Whittle is a freelance journalist based in Chevy Chase, Md., who covers military affairs for The Dallas Morning News. He is writing a book about the V-22 Osprey for Simon & Schuster.


ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq – On a clear, cool December morning, two odd-looking military aircraft zip along 8,000 feet above the empty desert of western Iraq, preparing to perform a feat worthy of science fiction.

As the V-22 Ospreys approach their dusty destination, a lonely Marine Corps outpost near the Syrian border, each craft's huge wingtip rotors, now serving as propellers, will steadily tilt upward – and in effect turn the two airplanes into helicopters to land.

Over the past three months, the Osprey's trick of transforming itself has become an everyday sight over Anbar province, where 10 of the Texas-built tiltrotor transports have been flying in a combat zone for the first time in the V-22's tumultuous 24-year history.

So far, the Osprey has defied the dire predictions of its most severe critics. Citing the V-22's record of four crashes and 30 deaths in test flights before 2001, some foes of the tiltrotor forecast more crashes and deaths in Iraq.

As of Dec. 28, three months through a scheduled seven-month deployment, the 23 pilots of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, known as VMM-263, had logged 1,639 hours of flight time in Iraq, carried 6,826 passengers and delivered 631,837 pounds of cargo without a mishap or even a close call.

That's good news not only for the Marines but also for Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. of Fort Worth and Boeing Co.'s helicopter division, near Philadelphia, which make the Osprey in a 50-50 partnership. About 2,500 Bell employees work on the Osprey in Fort Worth and Amarillo, where V-22s are assembled.

The Marines plan to buy 360 Ospreys in all. The Air Force is set to purchase 50 and may buy more, for special operations. The companies hope to sell dozens more to the Navy and potential foreign customers as well. An unsuccessful first V-22 deployment could torpedo those sales.

Headquartered at Asad, an isolated air base in the desert about 110 miles west of Baghdad, VMM-263's Ospreys spent their first two months in Iraq largely flying "general support" missions – hauling troops and supplies to and from forward operating bases.

"As long as they keep using it like a truck, I think they'll probably be OK," said Philip Coyle, a former Pentagon weapons testing director and a longtime Osprey critic.

In December, VMM-263 began to take on riskier tasks.

On Dec. 6, two of the Ospreys carried 24 combat-loaded Marines and 24 Iraqi troops on a raid near Lake Tharthar, 150 miles north of Baghdad, to look for suspected insurgents.

"It turned out to be a dry hole, there was nothing there," said Capt. Drew Norris, 30, of Dallas, a graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School and Texas A&M University who was one of the pilots on the raid. As for the flight, he said, "It went off without a hitch."

Two days later, two Ospreys were included for the first time in a well-established mission called "aeroscout," a sort of roving raid in which troops aboard helicopters search for insurgents by air. The ground troops commander scrubbed the mission when one Osprey needed to turn back to base because one of its four generators failed.

The generator failure is symptomatic of one big question hanging over the Osprey in Iraq: Is the $70 million aircraft reliable enough, or does it break too often?

One of the squadron's 10 Ospreys had to land in Jordan on the way into Iraq in October and spend a couple of days there being fixed after a wiring problem led the pilots to make a precautionary landing. Others have been grounded for days at a time for similar problems in Iraq.

"That's the kind of thing that has plagued the Osprey, reliability failures of one kind or another," Mr. Coyle said.

VMM-263 brought 14 contractor technicians with them to help deal with such problems, and the Marine Corps and contractors have taken pains to make sure the squadron gets all the parts it needs.

The squadron's readiness rate in Iraq – how many aircraft are ready to fly – has varied from as low as 50 percent to 100 percent on a given day, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Carlos Rios, maintenance material control chief. But the key question is whether enough aircraft are available for the missions that the squadron is assigned, he said.

Lt. Col. Paul Rock, commander of VMM-263, said his squadron had been forced to turn down taskings for lack of aircraft only "one or two days" during its first two months in Iraq.

In addition to flying troops and supplies, meanwhile, the Ospreys have become a favorite way to fly for VIPs, such as generals who need a fast way to get to the Marines' forward operating bases, which have no runways. Anbar is roughly the size of South Carolina.

The Osprey can take off and land like a helicopter but tilts its rotors all the way forward to fly like an airplane. That lets it fly more than twice as fast and far as the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters that the Marines are looking to replace. It cruises thousands of feet higher than helicopters.

The debate over the V-22 is far from over, though, in part because while the Osprey is flying in a combat zone, there isn't much actual combat in that zone these days.

When the Marines decided to send the Osprey to Iraq, Anbar was the hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that racked Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. By the time the squadron arrived in October, Sunni rebels had turned against the jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda and have been helping rather than attacking U.S. forces.

Through mid-December, none of VMM-263's pilots had reported any evidence of being shot at, though some had seen tracer rounds well below them while flying at night.

Under the circumstances, some critics might say that the Osprey isn't really being tested, but "people are too impatient," said V-22 advocate Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington think tank with close ties to the defense industry.

"The kind of harrowing operations that people anticipated haven't occurred so far, but what we're learning about the V-22 in Iraq is that it can operate every day, it can perform a wide range of missions, and – at least so far – it does not have deficient reliability," he said. "However, there's a long way to go before we grasp the potential of this aircraft. This is just the beginning."

Richard Whittle is a freelance journalist based in Chevy Chase, Md., who covers military affairs for The Dallas Morning News. He is writing a book about the V-22 Osprey for Simon & Schuster.

Ellie