The Desert Warrior

Soon the V-22 Osprey will be flying the skies over Iraq. Its deployment in war has been a long time coming – 25 years – and has cost a bundle - $119,000,000 each. If the plane is as strong in the air as it has been in the political battles of the past 25 years, it will be a real winner. Unfortunately, it seems to be fraught with problems.

One place to begin is with Secretary of Defense Cheney. In 1989 he said, “Given the risk we face from a military standpoint, given the areas where we think the priorities ought to be, the V-22 is not at the top of that list. It came out at the bottom of the list, and for that reason, I decided to terminate it.”

The Army dropped out of the program in 1983, leaving the Marines, which has just about zero experience managing airplane programs, in charge. Perhaps, that was one of the reasons why the original goal - 1,000 planes in 10 years costing $40,000,000 each - was not reached. But, even the Air Force would have been challenged managing this program because the Osprey is both an airplane and a helicopter. It uses a technology referred to as tiltrotor.

In 1991 one of the first Ospreys crashed when taking off for its first flight; the wiring was faulty. In 1992 another Osprey crashed killing seven. In 2000 two more crashed, killing 23. The plane was grounded for a year-and-a-half. An analysis of the last two crashes revealed that testing was cut short by a significant margin, for example, night flying tests were scheduled for 131 hours but only 33 hours were actually flown. Recent tests in the desert have raised questions as to whether it can fly in dusty conditions, conditions which are common in Iraq.

As the development moved on, a decision was made to eliminate a forward mounted machine gun which would be used to strike against forces trying to shoot the Osprey down; the gun was considered too heavy. The only gun on the Osprey is a small machine gun mounted on the rear ramp. It can shoot its small rounds only to the rear of the plane – where the plane has been, not where it’s going – and only when the ramp is lowered.

It seems that the helicopter part of the technology lacks one advantage of a helicopter: if a helicopter’s engines are damaged, it can still coast to the ground, not smoothly, but there’s a chance of saving the occupants; the Osprey cannot, so if both engines are hit, forget about survivors.

Despite these problems, the V-22 is still rolling off the production line. The GAO has stated that these planes are being accepted “with numerous deviations and waivers” including “several potentially serious defects”.

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Update
One of the ten Ospreys flown to Iraq had problems getting from Jordan to Iraq and had to try twice to finally succeed.