V-22 Is Proving Its Unique Potential

Two months ago the co-chairmen of the president’s bipartisan deficit commission issued a series of proposals for narrowing the gap between federal income and expenses. One section of their proposals concerned how annual defense spending could be trimmed $100 billion by fiscal year 2015. That was a reasonable goal, and many of the ideas that the co-chairs advanced for meeting it made sense. However, their findings were marred by a series of “illustrative” weapons cuts that did not make sense. Some of the suggested cuts would raise Pentagon costs rather than reduce them, and others would squander multi-billion-dollar investments made by past administrations.

A case in point was the recommendation to end procurement of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft due to a “troubled history” of developmental and maintenance problems. Whoever wrote the superficial rationale for prematurely terminating Osprey production was ignorant of both the current status of the program and the needs of its prospective users. In their very next recommendation, the co-chairmen contradicted themselves by proposing cancellation of a Marine Corps amphibious vehicle, arguing that the capabilities of the V-22 were more relevant to future warfighting needs. Obviously, somebody on the commission’s staff is a bit confused. So here are some basic facts about V-22.

The Osprey is the world’s first production tilt-rotor, meaning it is designed to combine the vertical ascent/descent capabilities of a helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing turboprop. It achieves this unique mix of features by pivoting (“tilting”) its two rotors while in flight. The program was conceived in the Reagan years to equip all of the military services with a flexible warfighting system that could execute diverse missions. The Army dropped out early, but the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have remained in the program. The Marine Corps is the lead service, with a stated requirement for 360 MV-22 variants around which it has built its plans for future warfare. The Air Force is purchasing an additional 50 CV-22 variants for special operations missions, and the Navy may buy its own variant for missions such as carrying supplies to aircraft carriers.

The defense department spent $25 billion over 25 years to develop the V-22. An additional $31.8 billion has been expended to manufacture production Ospreys, with $13.6 billion remaining to be spent. In other words, 80 percent of the money needed to meet Air Force and Marine requirements has been expended. The 150th V-22 was delivered in December under a multiyear production contract extending through 2012. The Osprey has flown nearly 100,000 hours to date, including in 13 successful overseas deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The current production version of the MV-22 has a mission-capable rate of 70 percent, which the Marine Corps expects will rise to 80 percent or higher.

Much has been written about the safety of the Osprey, but the aircraft has only suffered one fatal accident in the last ten years despite harsh operating conditions in overseas deployments. In that one accident, an Osprey hit the ground at high speed, killing four of the 20 personnel on board. In general, though, the V-22 has exhibited good performance in all three facets of survivability — susceptibility to being hit by fire, vulnerability to damage when hit, and crashworthiness in protecting occupants. So the “troubled history” of the tilt-rotor appears to be largely behind it, and it retains the support of its home services. Terminating it now would waste much of the investment past administrations have made to give U.S. warfighters a unique edge in combat.