The Osprey is back in the air after being grounded for months following a crash last November that killed eight U.S. service members in Japan.
Runner Meb Keflezighi helped kick off the official announcement of the San Antonio marathon, and KSAT got to talk to him.Read full article: An Olympian’s look: What a silver medalist has to say about San Antonio’s new marathon5 hours agoMake household chores easier and more with these Insider DealsTwo Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B Ospreys fly low and fast in formation on a training range named the Hornet at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., Oct. 9, 2024.
FILE - Photographs of Marine Cpl. Spencer R. Collart and his fellow marines, Capt. Eleanor V. LeBeau, bottom left, and Maj. Tobin J. Lewis, bottom right, are seen at the home of his parents in Arlington, Va., June 19, 2024. Collart, 21, was killed along with the two Marines when the MV-22B Osprey aircraft they were on crashed during drills on a north Australian island on Aug. 27, 2023.
Osprey pilot Maj. Lucas Duncavage and squadron commander Lt. Col. Seth Buckley talk over their V-22 Osprey training flight just after landing, at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., Oct. 9, 2024. During the flight they sped 100 feet off the ground on a training range named the Hornet. FILE - An MV-22 Osprey takes off as Japan Ground Self-Defense Force guards the landing zone during a joint military drill with U.S. Marines in Gotemba, southwest of Tokyo, March 15, 2022.
FILE - U.S. Osprey transport aircraft participate in the combined military amphibious landing exercise between South Korea and the U.S., called Ssangyong exercise, in Pohang, South Korea, Sept. 2, 2024. FiLE - Military rescue workers and boaters arrive on the scene of a crash, shortly after it happened, of an experimental V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft in the Potomac River just off the Quantico Marine Air Station, July 20, 1992, in Quantico, Va.
FILE - A V-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft taxi's during a mission in western Iraqi desert, Oct. 13, 2008. Two Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B Ospreys fly low and fast in formation on a training range named the Hornet at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., Oct. 9, 2024. – Over a New Mexico training range named the Hornet, two Osprey aircraft speed 100 feet off the ground, banking hard over valleys and hills as they close in on a dusty landing zone.
“There’s no other platform out there that can do what the V-22 can do,” said former Osprey pilot Brian Luce, who has survived two crashes. “When everything is going well, it is amazing. But when it’s not, it’s unforgiving.” There was no enemy fire. In the final seconds of flight, as the Osprey converted to land like a helicopter, it dropped at a rate of more than 1,800 feet per minute. The crash investigation was inconclusive but found possible crew errors and said the engines may have lost power from sucking in too much dust.
All five crew members survived. As the most seriously injured were airlifted out, Luce called his wife at the time, his voice shaking.Both the 2010 and 2012 crashes exposed issues with the Osprey that the military still faces today. “The fact that they fell out of the sky just defies logic," Luce's commander Lt. Col. Matt Glover told crash investigators in documents reviewed by the AP.
— That vertical rotation is at the core of what makes the Osprey complex. Crews must watch numerous factors: speed, the angles of the engine and rotor blades, and the up or down position of the aircraft's nose, related to the Osprey's weight and center of gravity to keep it from crashing. “It’s an aircraft with a huge amount of performance packed into a very compact space. What that means is that it’s a real hot rod to fly,” said Richard Brown, a rotorcraft specialist at Sophrodyne Aerospace."But it also has these foibles which are baked into the design.”Problems with the vertical engine caused the aircraft’s first fatal accident in 1992.
“I heard what sounded like the entire aircrew yelling ‘power, power, power,’” a surviving Marine told investigators, according to redacted interviews obtained by the AP. “The ceiling opened like a sardine can.” The pilots applied full throttle but the engines could not produce enough power to compensate for the loss. The Osprey kept falling, clipped the side of the ship and fell into the ocean, killing three.
Air Force crews fly the heaviest Osprey variant because of all the special instruments needed to allow it to fly secret missions, such as conducting rescues or inserting special operations forces in hostile territory. The strain from helicopter mode shows in the Osprey’s transmission. A total of 609 have had to be replaced in the past 10 years, according to data obtained by the AP.
Those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Marines’ three most serious categories of accidents climbed from 2019 to 2023, even as the number of hours they flew dropped significantly — from 50,807 in fiscal 2019 to 37,670 in 2023, according to data obtained by the AP. As the engines and rotor blades begin to rotate upward, the flight controls inside the cockpit change, too — from working like the controls inside an airplane to operating like those in a helicopter.
If there are other complications in flight or a pilot is distracted or misses the significance of an aircraft warning light, those mistakes can turn dangerous quickly. Many of them also wear black metallic memorial bands on their wrists, with the Nov. 29, 2023, crash date and the Osprey’s call sign, “Gundam 22,” etched in.Family members of the five Marines killed in a 2022 crash in California, caused by an unprecedented dual failure of the Osprey's clutch, are suing Bell and Boeing, and the maker of the engines, Rolls-Royce.
Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, which runs the joint Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy Osprey program, is working on a variety of upgrades that should make the aircraft easier to maintain and looking at how else the program can be improved. The Marine Corps is committed to flying its hundreds of Ospreys through 2050. But it’s also doing a study to decide whether to “significantly modernize the MV/22 and/or begin the process to move forward” to a next-generation assault aircraft, Lt. Gen. Bradford Gering, Marine deputy commandant of aviation, said in a statement.
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Japan has grounded its V-22 Osprey fleet again after flight incidentJapan has grounded its fleet of V-22 Osprey aircraft again after an incident last Sunday where one of the hybrid helicopter-aircraft tilted unexpectedly while trying to take off.
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Japan has grounded its V-22 Osprey fleet again after flight incidentJapan has grounded its fleet of V-22 Osprey aircraft again after an incident last Sunday where one of the hybrid helicopter-aircraft tilted unexpectedly while trying to take off.
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