Marine Corps excited about future of the Osprey

[leftchick]

http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050723/APN/507230501&cachetime=5

<snip>

By the end of 2000, it appeared the MV-22 Osprey - a unique tilt-rotor aircraft - might not get the chance. The program was suspended for 17 months following a pair of crashes that killed 23 Marines.

But the Osprey, once a target of Pentagon budget cutters and critics concerned about its safety, has emerged from exhaustive testing as an aircraft that Marine Corps officials excitedly endorse as safe to fly and eager to fight.

The next step is getting Congress to sign off on a $50.5 billion program the Corps hopes will have the Osprey carrying troops into battle as soon as 2007.

Hough acknowledges it might also take some time to gain confidence among "the grunts" - the Marine infantry troops the Osprey will carry into battle. They're used to the helicopter the Osprey is designed to replace, the Vietnam-era CH-46 Sea Knight.

[jody]

1. Marines have been excited for two decades over the Osprey but the

design or technology has failed to produce a viable weapon system.

[Catch22Dem]

3. I think there is a definite learning curve

They put these young pilots in the front seat and say "here ya go" with little training. It's a complex aircraft, but I think the design is good.

They need solid simulators and a great deal of sim time before getting behind the controls. Flying a fixed wing aircraft is a cinch. Flying a helicopter is a whole different ball game. I think any Osprey pilot should be checked out on rotary wing aircraft before ever getting in the V-22.

Just my $0.02

[flamin lib]

5. One of the issues with flying this thing is just what Catch22 said.

It isn't a fixed wing and it isn't a rotor craft either. It transitions from one to the other somewhere during the rotation of the engines and ALL of the controls shift from rotor pitch to control surfaces and it has to happen real fast. It is 100% fly-by-wire.

In the early days I saw one make a pass at relatively high speed--100 knots or so--it went behind a hanger and didn't come out the other side. The gate guard and I were about to call the fire dept when the bird rose in vertical mode from behind the building. It came in with rotors forward, rotated them to vertical and used pitch to stop the craft in less than 50 yards. Scared hell out of us spectators.

Bell also designed a UAV for Marine and Army use on the battle field--a real world terminator style tank killer. Lost the contract to conventional craft like the high altitude spy craft.

[Coastie for Truth]

20. Only the Coast Guard routinely cross-qualifies pilots

on fixed wing and rotary wing - and expects them to be fully qualified on both throughout their career (at least that's the way it was in the 1960's-1970's)

[Zech Marquis]

38. here here

I don't like the idea of some young Marine pilot beng tossed into a MV-22...especially if they don't have alot of flighttime with rotary aircraft. In fact, wasn't this how the Marine had some much trouble with their first Harrier jump jets?

[liam_laddie]

28. Osprey ready?

What about the dust-sand storms kicked up by those two 38 ft.
rotors (85 ft across both rotating...) ? Will the troops even be able to see where they're going? Seems like a self-deployed
smoke screen, not always desirable...
And wasn''t the "provision" for two ,50cal weapons dropped due to weight issues? Or did the generals reduce the performance
requirements to meet reality?
Allegedly, helicopters in Iraq suffer rapid intake filter clogging and rotorblade leading edge degrading due to the grit in the air.
Sorry to be so cynical, but this seems to be one of those programs which is extremely cost-inefficient. Read about the Stryker, that huge vulnerable eight-wheel LAV-APC (29 tons, only eight or nine troops) versus the proven (but "old" and not "sexy")
M-113 chassis, stretched one bogie and up-armored. The Stryker sems to be just another program gone way bad due to
egos and manufacturer pressure and greed. Sickening!

[Vickers]

2. I saw some of these at the Amarillo airport recently

They are BIG.

[flamin lib]

4. There were two issues that caused the crashes and they have

been fixed as far as I know. I was an electronics sales rep calling on Bell in Ft Worth for many years and worked with the engineers on this project.

Problem one was that because of the much higher rotor speeds vibration wore through hydraulic lines causing a loss of control. It was fixed by re-routing those lines such that visual inspection was possible.

Problem two was a fly-by-wire problem. The flight control computer was instructed to maintain rotor speed during hover. To do that it would increase and decrease rotor pitch. If one engine fell below specified RPM the pitch was pulled out and that side lost lift, allowing the other side to rotate the aircraft into an inverted position. Not a good thing close to the ground.

There is a civilian version of the craft that hasn't been released due to the publicity of the Osprey. It hasn't suffered the problems of the military version because it doesn't carry as much payload and the operating environment is much more benign,

[Coastie for Truth]

21. They have a civilian version (or mockup or prototype)

at NASA's Ames Lab in California.

Coast Guard Mini-Osprey (BA-309) Prototype--
<>

[Pepperbelly]

31. Perhaps or perhaps not but one thing is certain ...

they included them in the arsenal in 1979, when I left active duty and they were bragging about them and even though they have been fiddling with them ever since, they STILL have issues. That tells me that this is a machine whose time has NOT come.

on edit ... I was wrong about the 1979 date. I must've been thinking of the harriers.

[Hobarticus]

34. Okay, the Blackhawk was supposed to be the 'next big thing'

and they've been pulled from Iraq and Afghanistan, last I heard. They're too delicate for the enviornment, and too vulnerable to small-arms fire.

So, the Army and Marines pulled old Chinooks out of retirement. Every clip of troops you see, there's the beloved old Shithook in the background.

Are we making our systems too high-tech for the enviornments they're likely to operate in? Is this the case with the Osprey? Can it hack twelve months in the desert before falling apart? Because if the writing on the wall is any indictaion, we're going to be spending a lot of time in the desert.

[jody]

35. "too high-tech"? Yes and we don't know how to use technology against

an enemy with essentially crude weapons. We can bring death and destruction to a vast area but we don't know how to deal with IED.

I have friends in harms way and a few who've heard Taps. I don't want to see more die in an unsafe weapon system.

[anotherdrew]

48. I've heard they couldn't even use the humvees in much of bosnia

due to dirt roads and the weight of the vehicles causing them to sink down and get stuck.

[TroubleMan]

6. The Osprey is a death trap

In the 8 years I was in the Marine Corps (1992-2000), there were at least 30 deaths because of crashes.

They should get rid of it. The CH-46 is much safer.

[flamin lib]

7. I beg to disagree. See reply #4.

Any new technology has some unforeseen issues to deal with. In the case of the Osprey they were exacerbated by changing operational specifications. The Pentagon increased load capacity, interior space and other operating parameters during final design operations without adding R&D time. The shortcomings cited in #4 didn't show up in the concept test bed because it was much smaller than the final version called out by the Military. It didn't suffer from the weight to lift ratio in the final version. Extrapolation from a small test bed to a larger one doesn't always hold true, volumetric efficiency is not a flat line.

The CH-54 is a fine craft and can do some things the Osprey can't, but the need for the tilt rotor technology is still very pressing. Two things are very important to the Marine mission: Speed and duration. Rotor craft are limited to about 180 knots max forward speed because the trailing rotor blade loses lift with forward motion. At some point the advancing rotor blade lift will exceed the trailing blade to the point that the aircraft will perform an unintended snap roll. Not a good thing! A fixed wing craft can double the forward airspeed of a rotor-craft.

The other issue is fuel economy. Rotor-craft aren't very efficient. A fixed wing craft can vastly out distance a helicopter.

The tilt rotor can penetrate enemy territory deeper, faster and retrieve forward troops faster and better as well. It is also much quieter than a helicopter in forward flight adding a degree of stealth to insertions and extractions.

[flamin lib]

8. More on tilt rotor technology applications - - -

Once the design issues of the original production run are overcome and the aircraft gains acceptance as it proves itself, the civilian version will go into production. There is a huge need for this craft in the business world.

Executives who need to commute from one major city to another now must use conventional executive aircraft. This means a trip to the nearest airport and the attendant commute on the other end. Traffic from the old Intercontinental Airport to downtown Houston will exceed the flight time from Dallas! Then multiply by two for the return flight.

Helicopters aren't practical for flight speed and fuel economy reasons. Stopping to refuel on the trip eliminates the time saving of leaving one roof-top helipad and landing on another.

Enter the tilt rotor and an Attorney can leave the Dallas office, make a 45 minute flight and land at the Houston office, not at the airport! The entire round trip can take as little time as the commute to and from the airport.

Transit time goes from 4 hours plus to under two.

[TroubleMan]

9. I know that the Osprey is a great idea, but it keeps killing Marines

More important than speed, fuel efficiency, and tactical use is reliability.

Marines have always had to make the most from the least. That's what we do. That's what's being a Marine's about. We take all the left over equipment from the Army and Navy, and we outperform them.

If the equipment is reliable, then the Marines will get the job done. They have to be able to trust and rely on their equipment, even if it is second hand. We don't need flashy technology, just give use reliable, adequate technology that's proven to be safe.

Also, after the first few crashes, they said the same thing you just said: "Oh, we've found the problem....it's safe now." A few useless deaths later, we found out it was just lip service.

You may be right - they might have really found the problem this time, but they've said that a few times before. How can we trust them this time? Everybody in the Marines thought it was a death trap when I was in. Even if you change it so that it's not a death trap, then it will still be hard for people to shake that image or to believe it's reliable.

It's a failed program that's killed a bunch of Marines for no reason. Stop pouring money into it. It's a failed program...scrap it.

[flamin lib]

15. TroubleMan, I can relate to your comments.

I had a Marine son-in-law (very short term--'nother story) who told me that Army policy for dealing with a failed LAWS rocket launcher was to ditch it and shoot it until it exploded. Marines are instructed to dis-assemble it, repair it and use it against the enemy.

Every new technology has un-foreseen problems when it hits the field. Take the M-16 introduced in 'Nam. Lots of soldiers died trying to field strip it when it jammed in fire fights. It had mission critical capability (troops could carry 2X the ammunition and place 2X the killing fire on the enemy), so the Pentagon didn't kill the program.

The software problem would not have shown up had the Marines not changed the load specs at the last minute. Engine speed was not an issue with the original payload. Now not only is the software fixed but the current engines are superior to the original.

It is a fact of life and war that the guy at the end of the chain, the one who's life depends on his equipment, will discover every last weakness and discover it at the worst possible time.

All that said, I have to admit that Demotex is right. The real proof of reliability is when the Pentagon Big Wigs ride in it.

I, personally, would have no problem riding in it under full combat load conditions.

[GCP]

23. My younger son was asked if he wanted to go on the last one that crashed

Having lost a friend in Afghanistan who went for a ride on a helicopter that crashed - he was just going along for the ride - my son said "No".
Thank God he did.

[flamin lib]

26. One thing I've learned from sailing is that all things are a

compromise. If you make a sailboat fast, by nature it is uncomfortable. Make it comfortable and it won't be fast. It's a question of how fast you want to go against how badly you want to be bruised.

Ever wonder why there are so few civilian crashes per passenger hour compared to Military? Those airplanes are a compromise that pits mission critical capability against everything else.

Even training under the best of conditions is a very dangerous exercise.

It is the nature of the beast and why we should be so very very appreciative of what we ask these brave souls to do for us.

I cannot express how fucking angry I am over the VA medical funding shortfall of a $Billion. What's the excuse? The VA failed to anticipate the number of prostheses needed . . .

[karlrschneider]

25. I agree with you. I'm an aeronautical engineer and commercial pilot

for over 40 years and I'll fly just about anything ever built to leave the ground but I wouldn't fly or ride in one of those abortions for any amount of money. The basic essential design is fundmentally unsound. Machines break eventually and this thing has no possible way of being controlled if power is lost on either side. You can't glide it like a plane or autorotate it like a chopper...all you can do is bend over and...you know.

[flamin lib]

27. The same is essentially true of any fly-by-wire craft.

Redundancy is the only thing that makes the concept even marginally acceptable.

The basic essential design of a helicopter is unsound. Rotational torque makes the craft spin. Fix that with the tail rotor to counter the torque. Forward flight creates a lift differential on advancing vs trailing rotor blades. Fix that by making the gimbals at the rotor hub adjust pitch on rotation.

The F117 and B2 are both incapable of flight without very sophisticated flight computer controls.

Technology evolves. I learned to fly in an airplane that, on a windy day, could be tethered to a fence post and flown like a kite. At this point the communication equipment required to fly general aviation outweighs the fuel capacity of that airplane! (being facetious here)

A bumble bee is, by design, incapable of flight. Tell it to the bee.

[karlrschneider]

54. I bet you learned in an Ercoupe!??

I watched one do that very thing years ago, it was tied to a post and flew around until it ran out of gas, then just glided to a landing.
;-)

In college we referred to helicopters as "the only machine ever designed to continually attempt to destroy itself"

In the F117 the pilot is really more of a technician than a driver so ou have a point there but it doesn't carry dozens of troops and he can eject nearly instantly if there's a serious problem. Wouldn't be very easy to safely empty out an Osprey if one of the engines quit...really at most any altitude except real high I'd think.

[greblc]

44. I agree. Just because a Defense Contractor ...

and our Government have poured millions into the Osprey shouldn't extend testing or production on a failed machine. When engineers can replace Marine Corps Infantrymen then I'll get excited. Untill then let's spend some money on armor for our ground troops.

Semper Fi

[anotherdrew]

11. have you seen this...

Carter Aviation Technologies is a research and development company, pioneering new aviation concepts. Our primary focus is the slowed-rotor compound aircraft, a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that uses the rotor for takeoff and landing, and a small, efficient wing for high speed flight, up to 500 mph, all with much less complexity than a tilt-rotor or other vectored thrust vehicle. We have been flying the CarterCopter Technology Demonstrator (CCTD) since 1998, developing and demonstrating the slowed rotor concept, as well as our other technologies.

http://www.cartercopters.com

[flamin lib]

17. Cool! Really, really cool.

What are you using to prevent torque rotation during vertical flight? Didn't see anything in the pic.

This eliminates one of the major fly-by-wire problems of vectored thrust--the transition from helicopter controls using collective and fixed wing flight with control surfaces.

It has to be a LOT easier to link rotor RPM to airspeed and balance wing vs rotor lift.

Working on any heavy lift stuff?

[anotherdrew]

46. yes, they have a heavy lift design as well, plus...

that craft is capable of 1 mu (in which the back spin tip is actually standing still in the air as the thing goes forawrd), the top rotor can spin very very slow, it's a major design breakthrough. I can only imagine what these folks could achieve were they given a tenth the cash that's been lavished on osprey.

[bill]

49. Re: "have you seen this..."

Yep, a high-tech autogyro. BTW, that prototype crashed (but in a good way, no injuries)

[RummyTheDummy]

39. OH PLEASE -- Give me a sling shot and some marbles

And I could bring down a whole squadron of those flying pieces of shit. Why don't you go tell the familes of the soldiers (lab rats) who died proving this POS could work just how great it is. Save the technobable, por favor. It's fundamentally flawed. Period.

[GCP]

24. I agree with Troubleman

These things are death traps, I don't believe in the technology and how many more Marines are going to die because of these machines?

[DemoTex]

10. The acid test: How to tell if the MV-22 Osprey is really safe...

Will the generals and Pentagon big-wigs fly in it?

[anotherdrew]

12. make it be Marine One, the prsident's rotor ride

[pfitz59]

13. Silver bullets!

Do you buy one Osprey, and fear to use it because of the cost? or do you buy 30 H-46s, and take a few losses? Would be hard to use MV-22 in combat becuase the $$$$$$ risk would be enormous! But hey, what do I care, we're bleeding $1-2 billion a day in DOD expenditures, what's another $50+ billion gonna matter!

[flamin lib]

18. Our philosophy as a society has always been to spend money

in any quantity to save a single life. In an environment like combat that makes things really really expensive. In WWII the Japanese built many, many Zeros. Compared to a P-51 or P-47 they were virtually a throw away airplane (not making any comment on performance here, just manufacturing capability).

The ultimate goal will be to remove the soldier from the field as much as possible. In air combat that means UAVs. With current video game and flight simulator technology it will soon be possible to build smaller faster interceptor aircraft that will perform at levels that make it impossible for a human to survive inside the airplane. Pull more G-forces, make faster turns and do stuff that a pilot can only imagine.

Same with ground troops. Use UAVs with real time controls to kill tanks and troops from a distance.

Unfortunately it will never be possible to defeat an enemy without a guy on the ground with a gun to kill the other guy on the ground with a gun.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Semper Fidelis n/t

[gizmo1979]

16. the thing tends to fall

out of the sky for no reason.

[flamin lib]

19. No, not for no reason. For very specific reasons. Post #4. nt

[Enraged_Ape]

33. The problem is, this thing is a Frankenstein monster

An airplane, if something goes wrong, can always glide to a (hopefully) suitable landing location. After all, as I always tell nervous air travelers, an airplane WANTS to remain airborne.

A helicopter, if something goes wrong, can always "helicopter" down to a (hopefully) suitably landing location, via the same aerodynamic principles that allow maple seeds to settle gently to the ground.

But this Osprey, this hybrid thing, relies way too much on high technology to give it its aerodynamics. These machines DO have a tendency to drop like giant, multimillion dollar rocks when things go wrong.

[420inTN]

22. There is a reason: Gravity

:rofl:

[flamin lib]

29. Touche! nt

[gulfcoastliberal]

30. This smacks of bullshit

They can say they've fixed the bugs; the proof is in the pudding. What if an engine fails on one side or is hit by an RPG or even an API bullet? The sands of Iraq have been very punishing on the aircraft that are considered reliable and been in service many years. The Osprey appears to be far too complex and fragile to be used in harsh comabat conditions. All its testing, as far as I know, has been in nice, sand-free places. And it still crashed even with very few hours on the airframe. They need to do extended test flights at Edwards AFB, where there's lots of sand blowing around the dry lake. And use sandbags to simulate passengers rather than humans - the way they test loads in new commercial aircraft. It is so unethical to force/order Marines into an experimental & unproven design when sandbags or water barrels can be used - and have been and continue to be used to simulate loading in the civilian world. It just seems too risky and expensive to gamble more lives for the sake of attempting to justify the money already spent.

[flamin lib]

32. Good points all Gulfcoast. The Marines and Bell are ahead of you.

Yes, the proof is in the pudding or more appropriately in the fight testing. Bell hasn't been sitting on their hands making fixes on paper and expecting the Pentagon to buy into it. Each specific problem has to be exhaustively researched as to why, how to repair, tested, results documented and submitted for approval.

Testing was done with dead weight right up to the point that entry and exiting was an issue. Can't get the doggone sandbags to jump out on command. The behavior of the craft as weight changes quickly has to be established and can't be done without actual combat simulation. Does it gain altitude rapidly making the last to exit jump 30 feet to the ground? Does it perform some unplanned aerobatic? Keep in mind that the craft isn't only getting lighter, but the load is shifting front to rear, side to side.

I can't speak to where or how all the testing was done but I can assure you that neither Bell nor the Marine Command would needlessly put human life at risk.

Surely you don't think that the set of human beings working at Bell or the human beings in Marine Command are so unfeeling that a few soldiers lives are worthless?

Have a friend in QA at Boeing (retired). One of the planes he supervised assembly of fell from the sky and killed 200 people. When told of the accident he threw up on the spot. No fault of his, no quality issue at all, it's just the automatic gut response when this sort of thing happens. Nobody takes this lightly.

[daleo]

36. I admire your idealism

"Surely you don't think that the set of human beings working at Bell or the human beings in Marine Command are so unfeeling that a few soldiers lives are worthless?"

Many people (including myself) couldn't type that sentence without a heavy sense of irony.

[anotherdrew]

47. actualy...

after what I've read about the development of the humvee and the bradly
and their talk of psychological armor (at the army mechanized command) when better designs are rejected...

I just don't know what to think

[msongs]

37. whose congressional district house the manufacturer...follow the money nt

[Zech Marquis]

40. Bell Aircraft

based n...oh my god, Texas :wow:

[niallmac]

45. Du'ers, read the article. The problem was the 'vortex ring'...

This ring of swirling hot air needs billions of dollars to maintain lift. Let congress fill the vortex with dollars and our marines will be able to get to any illegal war anywhere in the world in half the time ...you un troop supporting communist non techno skeptics all of ya.
If you really cared you would tell your DC rep to support Bill # 86thisPOSnow. The bill requires the sons and daughters of the congressmen, senators and contractors of this coffin only be allowed to ride in it. If this bill passes, then the Osprey is history.

[ed2004]

41. This comes as a bit of a surprise...

...I thought we'd finally gotten rid of these duds.

[gkhouston]

42. nope. They just starting calling it the "Osprey" instead

of the "Tiltrotor" and hoped people would forget the crash record. :-(

[Lithos]

43. I think they need to read Arthur C Clarke

Particularly his short story "Superiority".

L-

[panzerfaust]

50. Osprey: Turkey More Like

I thought it had died years ago: taking a lot of Marines with it...good pork don't just never die.

[Robeson]

51. Pentagon + Weapons Systems = Military Industrial Complex Orgasm.

[RPM]

52. is it obsolete yet?

is this really what we need for huntin' terrorists?

[Chicago Democrat]

53. German troops are so excited about spending winter in Stalingrad,

and are anxiously awaiting Herr Goerings amazing super weapons to destroy the inhuman Soviet dogs!


Seig Heil!


(sarcastic literary device over)