Why Us Won't Ground The Crash-Prone V-22 Osprey

The Marine Corps is famfor landing soldiers across beaches during combat but in the modern era this is difficult. Potential adversaries now have excellent beach defenses, and bringing ships close enough to shore to land soldiers via traditional naval landing craft or conventional helicopters is becoming unrealistic.

The Osprey solves this by allowing amphibiships to remain hundreds of kilometers at sea and launch assaults onto the beach“from over the horizon.” A landing can now surprise an enemy, while the Osprey's range allows many more possible landing sites to be accessed.

The Marines first brought the Osprey into service in 2007, and it has been central to the adoption of a whole new way of war . They have dispensed with heavy mechanized forces like tanks in favor of rapid maneuvers, light vehicles, long-range missile technology and island-hopping.

This approach of so-called Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) is the Marine Corps' answer to China's growing assertiveness in East Asia and to keeping the Corps relevant in the modern era. The Marines in Darwin now practice EABO .

That's the upside. The downside of being leading-edge technology is having little historical experience of similar aircraft to fall back on.

Every Osprey flight is a learning event for the pilots, the maintenance personnel and the aircraft's manufacturer.

For example, theAir Force grounded their Ospreys for two weeks last year over worries about gearbox matters. This has been an ongoing problem that seems to get worse the more an aircraft is flown and the gearbox used; technical fixes are in the works.

The central concern today is flying safety and here the Osprey has a mixed record. The aircraft had four crashes and 30 deaths during its initial development. Since entering operational service in 2007 there have been an additional ten crashes and 24 deaths.

Two of these ten were on combat operations where the cause was uncertain. The others were due to pilot error or technical problems. A fatal crash off Rockhampton in 2017 can be seen in a terrifying video that also shows operating the Osprey is a complicated business.

As the Osprey has flown more, more knowledge has been gained and the accident rate has declined.

However, its accidents have tended to come in bunches. In the eight months from December 2016 to September 2017 there were three crashes; in the 18 months from March 2022 to now, there have been another three.

This all compares very unfavorably with American civil aviation, which has a much better safety record.

In 2020, a report by the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety said the main culprits for themilitary's air accidents were insufficient flying hours to keep aircrew proficient, inadequate personnel training, inconsistent funding for spare parts supply and risky maintenance practices.

The implication is that safety can be improved. It just needs to be properly addressed.

Historically, the safety record of revolutionary aircraft like the Osprey improves as more operating experience is gained and unknown technical problems are found and addressed. That was certainly the Australian experience with the F-111 strike aircraft, which had an early run of crashes followed by many years of safe operation.

This is important as the Osprey looks set to be the first of its type, not the last. TheArmy has chosen a new generation tiltrotor, the V-280 Valor , to replace its aging Blackhawk helicopters.

Over time, the Valors will inevitably be deployed to Australia on training exercises. Meanwhile, Australia is acquiring Blackhawks to replace the Australian Army's Taipan helicopters, which are apparently difficult to maintain.

When those new Blackhawks eventually are themselves replaced, it is likely Australia will go the way of theand buy tiltrotors too. Civil aviation is getting interested in tiltrotors as well.

Tiltrotors like the Osprey and its successors are likely to fly in Australian skies well into the future.

Peter Layton is Visiting Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

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