From Time

 

V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame

Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2007

By MARK THOMPSON

 

It's hard to imagine an American weapons program so fraught with problems that Dick Cheney would try repeatedly to cancel it — hard, that is, until you get to know the Osprey. As Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush, Cheney tried four times to kill the Marine Corps's ungainly tilt-rotor aircraft. Four times he failed. Cheney found the arguments for the combat troop carrier unpersuasive and its problems irredeemable. "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 the list," he told a Senate committee in 1989. "It came out at the bottom of the list, and for that reason, I decided to terminate it." But the Osprey proved impossible to kill, thanks to lawmakers who rescued it from Cheney's ax time and again because of the home-district money that came with it — and to the irresistible notion that American engineers had found a way to improve on another great aviation breakthrough, the helicopter.

 

Now the aircraft that flies like an airplane but takes off and lands like a chopper is about to make its combat debut in Iraq. It has been a long, strange trip: the V‑22 has been 25 years in development, more than twice as long as the Apollo program that put men on the moon. V‑22 crashes have claimed the lives of 30 men — 10 times the lunar program's toll — all before the plane has seen combat. The Pentagon has put $20 billion into the Osprey and expects to spend an additional $35 billion before the program is finished. In exchange, the Marines, Navy and Air Force will get 458 aircraft, averaging $119 million per copy.

 

The saga of the V-22 — the battles over its future on Capitol Hill, a performance record that is spotty at best, a long determined quest by the Marines to get what they wanted — demonstrates how Washington works (or, rather, doesn't). It exposes the compromises that are made when narrow interests collide with common sense. It is a tale that shows how the system fails at its most significant task, by placing in jeopardy those we count on to protect us. For even at a stratospheric price, the V-22 is going into combat shorthanded. As a result of decisions the Marine Corps made over the past decade, the aircraft lacks a heavy-duty, forward-mounted machine gun to lay down suppressing fire against forces that will surely try to shoot it down. And if the plane's two engines are disabled by enemy fire or mechanical trouble while it's hovering, the V‑22 lacks a helicopter's ability to coast roughly to the ground — something that often saved lives in Vietnam. In 2002 the Marines abandoned the requirement that the planes be capable of autorotating (as the maneuver is called), with unpowered but spinning helicopter blades slowly letting the aircraft land safely. That decision, a top Pentagon aviation consultant wrote in a confidential 2003 report obtained by Time, is "unconscionable" for a wartime aircraft. "When everything goes wrong, as it often does in a combat environment," he said, "autorotation is all a helicopter pilot has to save his and his passengers' lives."

 

Read the rest of the article at the link above.

From Defense Industry Daily

 

V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame?

04-Oct-2007 22:03

 

Every once in a while, a defense-related controversy becomes large enough to hit mainstream news outlets. Making the cover of TIME Magazine is often a good sign for world leaders, but it's almost always a very bad sign for military programs. Especially a program that is just making its combat debut. TIME's Oct 8/07 cover story "V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame" pulls few punches:

 

"The saga of the V-22 – the battles over its future on Capitol Hill, a performance record that is spotty at best, a long, determined quest by the Marines to get what they wanted – demonstrates how Washington works (or, rather, doesn't). It exposes the compromises that are made when narrow interests collide with common sense. It is a tale that shows how the system fails at its most significant task, by placing in jeopardy those we count on to protect us. For even at a stratospheric price, the V-22 is going into combat shorthanded. As a result of decisions the Marine Corps made over the past decade, the aircraft lacks a heavy-duty, forward-mounted machine gun to lay down suppressing fire against forces that will surely try to shoot it down. And if the plane's two engines are disabled by enemy fire or mechanical trouble while it's hovering, the V-22 lacks a helicopter's ability to coast roughly to the ground – something that often saved lives in Vietnam. In 2002 the Marines abandoned the requirement that the planes be capable of autorotating (as the maneuver is called), with unpowered but spinning helicopter blades slowly letting the aircraft land safely. That decision, a top Pentagon aviation consultant wrote in a confidential 2003 report obtained by TIME, is "unconscionable" for a wartime aircraft. "When everything goes wrong, as it often does in a combat environment," he said, "autorotation is all a helicopter pilot has to save his and his passengers' lives."

Recent developments are about to address one of these concerns, but TIME has hardly been the Osprey's only critic, or the most thorough. That distinction probably belongs to a report published by the left-wing Center for Defense Information, which makes a number of very specific allegations re: the V-22's technical and testing failings…

 

MV-22 Ospreys are currently headed to Iraq for deployment, reportedly with significant limitations on their use in order to avoid a catastrophe for the program. This is certainly a possibility given the Osprey's $100+ million price tag, and costs of recapitalization can leak into tactical decisions at a number of levels. Time will tell if that proves to be the case.

If the worst happens, however, many will ask if key warnings went unheeded. Lee Gaillard is a former Marine reservist and a widely published defense and aerospace writer, and the left-leaning World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information sponsored and backed his 2006 indictment of the program: V-22: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker? [PDF format, 396k]. DID's typical "Additional Readings & sources" section at the end of this article adds other relevant information including Congressional Research Service reports, the full Pentagon's OT-IIG testing report that certified the V-22, BAE's proposal for a V-22 turret, and a response from the US Marines.

 

Before our savvy readers examine the CDI document and email us, DID is aware that the CH-47 Chinook cited as an alternative platform in Gaillard's document is not compatible with the internal dimensions of amphibious assault ships (though the EH101 and H-92 are). We're also aware that a solution may be imminent to a key deficiency cited by TIME magazine and by Gaillard – the V-22's inability to provide suppressive fire for its landing zones because its only armament points backward from an open rear ramp. At AUSA 2007 in October, BAE announced that it has tested the RGS turret solution for the V-22, which would provide 360 degree coverage using a 3-barrel 7.62mm GAU-17 minigun. This weapon is not an immediate solution, however; it has not been added to the Ospreys bound for Iraq, has not received a production contract as of this date, and will not be available until Q3 2008.

 

With respect to other elements of the CDI report and/or TIME article, DID would note that official responses referred to inaccuracies, but did not directly address most of the serious claims Gaillard made. DID would invite the US military and/or V-22 Program office to take up the debate, and do so in a publicly-accessible forum. As a convenience to them and to our readers, DID has reproduced key quotes from the CDI report that contain the most serious allegations. It is our hope that this will stimulate a direct response that will address their individual factual basis and/or remedial actions already undertaken.

 

If DID receives a document like that, we will publish it.

 

The allegations tend to fall into several distinct categories. DID has grouped them for convenience. The OT-IIG report is the 2005 Pentagon report that declared the V-22 "suitable and effective." That is a formal designation, allowing a weapons system to move into production.

 

Flight Control

 

The most heavily publicized issue with the Osprey is Vortex Ring State, a situation that can occur with any rotorcraft and cause it to lose lift. Most helicopters will just autorotate and either recover or autorotate to the ground. The Osprey's big problem is that it risks losing lift in just one of its two engines, in which case it will flip over and begin to fall upside down. This has led to previous test flight crashes which were fatal to all concerned. As the OT-IIG report states, "When descending at a high rate with low forward speed, the rotor can become enveloped in its own downwash, which can result in a substantial loss of lift. … Should one rotor enter VRS and lose more lift than the other rotor, a sudden roll can result, which quickly couples into a[n inverted] nose-down pitch."

 

Gaillard alleges that recovery from the Vortex Ring Styate (VRS) that has caused past fatal crashes may not be possible if the pilot is flying at low altitude:

 

"The Pentagon's report tells us that OT-IIG ran flight tests to address the problem, that "rapid recovery has been demonstrated by rotating the nacelles forward at the first sign of VRS,"20 that aircrews were able to accomplish their missions… nacelle would be able to tilt forward 16 degrees over a 2-second period, resulting in probable abort of any descent profile in progress. The altitude, however, is discernible in context: they were at thousands of feet. Such altitude and time are unavailable luxuries during rapid troop insertion under fire passing through low altitude."

 

V-22 crew chief Staff Sgt. Brian Freeman's letter to Gannett's Marine Corps Times, however, says that:

 

"Gaillard said the aircraft was limited to “800 feet per minute vertical rate of descent” because of vortex ring state, but what he fails to say or does not know is that most descents are performed from 200 feet and below in airplane mode. The total time from airplane mode at 200 feet to wheels on deck is two minutes, give or take a few seconds. That is based on four years of flying on the aircraft and performing more than 300 hours of confined area landings" [i.e. actual descent is about 1,000 feet/minute].

 

The Osprey's ability to operate at night was not tested properly, and indicates maintenance issues:

 

"Although the test plan included 29 mission profiles … at night, they only accomplished 12."54 That's only 41 percent of their objectives. The report provided no explanation of what would seem to be a significant testing inadequacy. Not only that, but just before the operational evaluation, "proprotor gearbox problems significantly curtailed flight operations. As a result, VMX-22 could not completely qualify the expected number of aircrew to conduct night operation aboard the ship."

 

Inadequate shipboard testing for landing under realistic conditions:

 

"At night or by day, in flight or on deck, the V-22 is dangerously susceptible to sudden aerodynamic instabilities resulting from wakes of other aircraft during formation flight, disturbed flow fields downwind of the ship's superstructure, or turbulence generated by idling props of other aircraft preparing for takeoff. Testing under just such conditions is, therefore, crucial. But night shipboard testing is revealed to have been less than realistic: only slightly more than half the rotorcraft that would normally operate off the deck of the USS Bataan were present during the testing, and "with more aircraft expected on board, there will be an adverse effect upon flight deck operations."62 As indicated, serious and potentially dangerous aerodynamic issues come into play here, given prop wash from multiple MV-22s operating in close conditions on a dark and crowded flight deck, yet V-22 production was approved before testing under such conditions had even been attempted. This outcome is particularly disturbing coming four years after the GAO had soundly criticized NAVAIR's previous round of V-22 tests for lack of operational realism inherent in its "formation flight limitations – wingman shall avoid and not cross lead aircraft wake during formation flights, 250 ft. lateral and 50 ft. step-up separation shall be maintained."

 

Despite its status as an aircraft with exceptionally heavy downwash, operations in brownout conditions that have caused the loss of many rotary craft over the years were not properly tested in the OT-IIG:

 

"VMX- 22 did not encounter landings under conditions with severe visibility degradation during OT-IIG … [because] an unusually wet spring resulted in a large amount of vegetation that prevented severe brownouts during landing attempts."52 Why no re-testing at a later date in an appropriate locale? So much for critical testing that would have provided valuable insights into operation under conditions prevailing in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other desert-type locations where the Osprey may well see combat in 2007….

 

The OT-IIG report itself states that "in more severely degraded environments, such as in brownout conditions, the immediate area affected by downwash is large," and "approximately 25 percent of the landings in severe brownout conditions resulted in unintended wave-offs."

 

Flawed flight control software had contributed to fatal V-22 crashes and been a source of problems for the program, but the OT-IIG tests didn't use actual aircraft:

 

"To evaluate flight control system (FCS) software and hardware, the OT-IIG report tells us that the "manufacturer integrated three simulation [author emphasis] laboratories. This triple tie-in lab allowed a pilot in a realistic cockpit simulator to fly mission profiles and perform emergency procedures using actual flight control system hardware and software."

 

Performance

 

Tests purporting to show the MV-22's ability to carry 24 Marines were not honestly conducted, and unsuccessful:

"Other test exercises used "a ballast weight of 4,760 pounds in lieu of 24 combat equipped Marines,"57 which translates to an underweight and highly unlikely estimate of 198 pounds per body armor-equipped Marine carrying rifle, ammo, and full combat pack: allowing a modest 60 pounds for all that gear puts each hefty Marine at roughly 138 pounds. That's not a realistic test. With five aircraft assigned to each mission, the outcome was that "two aircraft aborted the day mission because of mechanical failures,"58 and "the test team had previously scaled back the night mission to three aircraft, of which one aborted"59 – a 50 percent aircraft abort/ cancellation rate with no live troops carried. The official summary of this operation borders on the inexplicable: "VMX-22 successfully executed the TRAP missions within the scope of aircraft and environments available for each mission."

 

Osprey cannot carry up-armored Humvees:

 

"...since the V-22 is unable to carry an up-armored Humvee on a single cargo hook, the OT-IIG external lift profile cited transport of a 6,250-pound water trailer and a 7,200-pound "operational combat vehicle"67 later identified by the V-22 program's PAO as a standard – unarmored – Humvee. When standard Humvees proved extremely vulnerable in combat in Iraq, the acute need for up-armored versions quickly became apparent. Now, more than three years later, certification of the V-22 to carry up-armored Humvees on two hooks has not yet occurred and has not even been "identified as a requirement by the Marine Corps or prioritized in their funding of flight tests."

 

Osprey not tested for load carriage paramaters, which may be untrue:

 

"Even compartments in Table III-1 on page 15 of the OT-IIG report, "MV-22 Block A Performance Results," are filled with fudge: for Amphibious External Lift with a required 10,000-pound vehicle, a 6,900-pound vehicle is substituted, but the Block A Projection [author emphasis] suggests that a 10,000-pound vehicle therefore ought to be able to be carried 115 nautical miles (nm), even while another box admits that the improved Block B V-22 can be projected to carry said weight only 40 nm instead of the required 50 nm."

 

Deployability hampered by lack of ICAO qualifications:

 

"Despite the Osprey's ostensible transoceanic self-deployment capability with air-to-air refueling, the Marine Corps' V-22 leadership failed to account for the need to meet International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requirements specifically for highfrequency (HF) radio installation for beyond line-of-sight communication. NAVAIR's March 27, 2003, Tech Review states: "Current UHF/VHF and SATCOM capability cannot fulfill this function,"98 and urges that they "convince HQMC to establish requirement."99 Given the ICAO's well-known and long-standing requirement, this V-22 omission represents a significant oversight. Three years later, it remains uncorrected."

 

Inability to communicate when in anti-jam mode:

 

"Furthermore, the OT-IIG report tells us that critical Osprey voice information exchange requirements (IERs) cannot be met when its radio system is operating in the anti-jam mode – a key expectation in combat, one would assume. Moreover, "user ID numbers greater than 399 causes the mission computer to cycle continuously, blanking out flight displays,"...It would therefore seem that the MV-22's Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) is essentially useless."

 

Heating and cooling are inadequate for most anticipated combat zones, which feature climate extremes:

 

"...inadequate cooling and heating systems that cannot anticipate both hot climates, with a need to keep cargo and troops in heavy combat gear cool, and cold climates, when long flights might necessitate extra heating. Troops arrive dehydrated and enervated by the heat, or chilled and stiff from the cold. This concern was raised four years earlier in the previously cited GAO report: "Cabin environment cannot be adequately controlled to prevent extreme temperature conditions."118 Troops have also voiced complaints about the cabin temperatures. "I have a big concern about the temperature of the inside of the aircraft. You could have heat casualties before they even get on the ground," reported one Marine.119 Another declared: "ECS is designed to keep the cabin [plus] 10 degree ambient. On cold days with sub-zero wind-chill and temperature crewmembers are literally freezing. Hot days are the opposite extreme." 120"

 

Troop accommodations slow exit, and create risks to soldiers:

 

"...poorly designed seat belts with hard-to-manipulate latches that entangle easily. Unfortunately, this "may [read will] increase the time for embarkation and debarkation, posing a safety risk during combat or emergency evacuations."121 The short seat pans cut circulation and "caused [troops'] legs to fall asleep during flight"122 (not to mention the possible onset of potentially fatal deep vein thrombosis), because shock-attenuating pistons under the seats force troops to stow their combat packs on their laps (aggravating leg circulation problems) or in the aisle, causing congestion that "may [read will] impede an emergency or combat egress."

 

Reliability & Maintainability

 

Poor reliability cited in official reports:

 

"According to the table on page 26, V-22 mission commanders should be prepared for false alarms after every 1.6 hours of flight, for an aircraft mission abort after the equivalent of eight three-hour flights, or a parts failure any time an aircraft has flown more than 90 minutes.

 

Mission planners are to be prepared for… post-abort mean repair time of nine hours before the rotorcraft will be ready for resumption of the mission – when "the MRTA threshold requirement for the Block A aircraft is 4.8 hours or less…. the individual component repair list classifies over 500 of more than 590 items as 'Repair Not Authorized at the I-Level.' Those items have to be returned to depot-level repair facilities when they fail."

 

Cabin damage (such as bullet holes) affect load-bearing integrity – and can't be fixed in the field:

 

"Damage to [the cabin wall] can make the aircraft unavailable for an extensive period"90 because it cannot be repaired in the field. NAVAIR knew two years earlier that since "the cabin wall is load-bearing…[it] may not be repaired without first performing an engineering assessment…not available at the combat unit level."91 The key recommendation in the report, "re-design of cabin wall,"92 was not done. "Unfunded,"93 the report noted."

 

If maintenance requires unfolding the wings, difficulties arise at sea:

 

"...heat from the V-22's rotor/prop turbine exhaust caused the USS Bataan's flight deck to buckle under the right engine following more than 20 minutes of idle; the same problem had occurred on both the USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima during the previous round of testing. Since space limitations mandate that "any maintenance actions requiring the proprotors to be spread [out of their folded mode] must be conducted on the flight deck,"101 both bad weather and flight operations would still delay such repairs. Furthermore, incompatibility of ship and aircraft power sources unnecessarily complicates logistical support: 118 volts on the USS Bataan vs. an MV-22 requirement (for its sensitive avionics system) of 115 [plus or minus 2] volts."

 

Survivability

 

Lack of visibility inside the Osprey creates poor awareness of outside threats:

 

"Windows are small and so poorly placed that "crew chiefs still [author emphasis] criticize the poor outside field of view,"109 rendering them unable "to scan for traffic and airborne or ground threats."110 Previous testing had revealed this critical deficiency years earlier, yet no design changes were implemented. "Crew chief/observer will not be able to get visual on Bandits or SAMs due to poor porthole size,"111 said one participant. E "This was a very frustrating flight because of the crew chief 's inability to provide the pilots with vital information regarding the aggressors' location,"112 according to another."

 

And the threat displays & aids aren't much help:

 

"...a separate threat display makes it difficult to correlate displayed threat information with aircraft position presented on the cockpit map display."148 Furthermore, "the synthetic warning voice provided by the APR-39 is unintelligible to all crew members."149 In brief, confusion may reign in the cockpit as the aircraft approaches a hot landing zone and the pilot has to look back and forth between different screens to locate the threats, even as the recorded voice warning about those threats is providing meaningless and distracting information, and while main cabin windows' "limited visibility…prevents the crew chief from providing effective lookout against surface and airborne threats."150

 

The V-22's hydraulic lines are redundant, but can be disabled all at once in several places:

 

"But "operation" is not combat. In many areas of the wings and nacelles, the three brittle titanium 5,000 psi hydraulic lines often run parallel routes in very close proximity to each other. What happens when an RPG or 30 mm AA round explodes in the midst of such a nexus? Most likely, a rapid and complete loss of hydraulic pressure, followed by loss of aircraft control.51 True triple redundancy would involve a totally different configuration of widely separated hydraulic lines in the V-22."

 

No autorotation means any crash is likely to kill everyone on board. This issue was also given a fair bit of space in the TIME magazine report:

 

"[The OT-IIG] report's own executive summary states: "Emergency landing after the sudden failure of both engines in the Conversion/Vertical Take-Off and Landing modes below 1,600 feet altitude are not likely to be survivable. … The V-22 cannot [author emphasis] autorotate to a safe landing."168 A subsequent comment in the summary states: "Additional flight tests should be conducted to provide validated procedures for dual-engine failure [and none have been conducted]."

 

No real tests for single-engine shutdown:

 

"Although a V-22 program spokesperson told me that its testing regimen has included a number of one engine inoperative (OEI) transitions in level flight and in steeply angled descents to roll-on landings (and equivalent rolling short takeoffs),16144 it is disturbing to note that during its 17 years of evaluation, the V-22 has never been tested in this purely vertical OEI landing or takeoff mode with one engine completely shut down, exactly the kind of landing or takeoff necessary from a small clearing in a jungle or on a mountainside. Since this key test was omitted, the report's claim cannot be considered seriously. Furthermore, because any OEI situation will immediately deprive the aircraft of 50 percent of its previous max power capability, and given that the V-22's prop design does not permit a helicopter-type pre-landing flare, vertical landing of a loaded OEI Osprey would result in substantial landing impact with probable damage to the aircraft."

 

V-22 crew chief Staff Sgt. Brian Freeman's letter to Gannett's Marine Corps Times, however, says that:

 

"...during the last four years flying on the MV-22, I have been single-engine two times; on both occasions, the aircraft responded as if nothing had happened. The aircraft's ability to provide lift comes from its torque available vs. torque required – simply put, if you limit the amount of torque that a student pilot can use during takeoff or landing training events, which we do, you in turn simulate a single-engine profile. I can tell you that there is no difference between actual and simulated single-engine performance."

 

Very large radar reflection:

 

"Nevertheless, the countermeasures dispensing system was found to have insufficient capacity for longer missions, and radar reflection from the V-22's total propeller disc area of more than 2,267 square feet rivals that of two Boeing 707s in formation.146 (Given that situation, one can only wonder at the logic behind the development of top-secret "stealth paint" for the fuselage at a cost of $7,500 per gallon; the one aircraft they painted required 10 gallons for a paint job costing $75,000 – but those huge, whirling discs were still there, bouncing back radar signals with gusto.)"

 

Evasive maneuvers not tested properly:

 

"Aware of such maneuvering often required in the stress of combat, in late 2002 one military observer specifically recommended adding to V-22 testing three specific evasive maneuvers that included "maximum rate course reversals and landing zone aborts." This should have been nothing new; as he formally cited, such maneuvers had long been an integral part of accepted and official rotorcraft doctrine – "consistent with the definition of ‘aggressive agility' as required for utility rotorcraft in ADS-33E, Performance Specification, handling Qualities Requirements for Military Rotorcraft, 21 Mar 2000."153 NAVAIR agreed that these maneuvers should be tested, but they still had not done so more than a year later "because the V-22 rotor control system repeatedly exceeded rotor disk flapping limits154 while approaching the requested conditions."155 As V-22 Red-Ribbon Panel Coordinator Col. Harry Dunn explained, "Whereas virtually all helicopter rotors have a limit of 28 to 30 degree blade flapping capability, the V-22 propellers are limited to 10 degrees to avoid damage to the rotor, rotor swash plates, and rotor hubs…[E]xceeding these limits can result in rotor failure or breakage, leading to aircraft control failures."

From Marine Corps Times

 

Leaders, experts slam Time article on Osprey

By John Hoellwarth - Staff writer

Posted : Sunday Oct 14, 2007 9:39:00 EDT

 

The Corps’ MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft will crash eventually, and Marines will die. That much is certain. The same can be said of virtually every aircraft in the military inventory.

 

Marine officials conceded the point in the wake of an eight-page Oct. 8 cover story in Time magazine titled “A Flying Shame.” The article highlighted the Osprey’s checkered past and called into question the capability, safety, economy and wisdom of fielding an aircraft that hovers like a helicopter and flies like a plane on the eve of its combat debut in Iraq.

 

It’s “silly” to expect the Osprey to be the military’s first crash-proof aircraft, said Col. Glenn Walters, a former Osprey squadron commander and pilot now serving as head of the Corps’ aviation plans, programs and budget branch.

 

The Time article describes how “narrow interests” kept the Osprey alive in Congress despite schedule and cost overruns throughout its 25-year development. It tells how specifications were modified — and eliminated — as the prototypes failed to meet them. Ultimately, the article says the Corps is putting Marines’ lives in “jeopardy” by putting them in the Osprey.

 

But what the article leaves out, said senior Marine leaders, civilian and military aviation experts, a Washington think tank and at least one of the “critics” quoted by Time, is the aircraft’s true status.

‘Sensationalistic view’

 

In an official letter to the magazine dated Oct. 1 and obtained by Marine Corps Times, Assistant Commandant Gen. Robert Magnus wrote that reporter Mark Thompson’s story “serves up a one-sided, sensationalistic view of the program, full of inaccuracies, and misleading to Time’s readers.”

 

“It is sad that Time’s story failed to include the fact that in the past six years, the [Osprey] program had the most extensive technical and programmatic review in the history of aircraft,” Magnus wrote. “The cover and the story, including dated material, was neither balanced nor accurate.”

 

The Corps’ top spokesman, Brig. Gen. Robert Milstead, himself a Marine aviator, called the story “old whine in a new bottle.”

 

Attempts to reach Thompson were unsuccessful. An automated response generated by his e-mail account said he was on leave until Oct. 15. Daniel Kile, a spokesman for the magazine, said, “Time stands behind the story.”

 

Meanwhile, the critics are having a field day with the piece, deconstructing its assertions point-by-point on blogs, in newsletters and even in an official “information paper” prepared by Marine officials. The question on many minds is, simply, do Thompson and Time magazine fully understand the mission and purpose of this new kind of aircraft?

Lack of autorotation

 

Take, for instance, the lack of an autorotation capability. If a helicopter loses its engines and begins to fall, the upward push of air on the unpowered rotor blades keeps them spinning fast enough to bring the bird down in a jarring, but survivable, landing. This autorotation is a standard requirement for helicopters. But the Osprey can’t do it, which Time considered a flaw.

 

But as Marine officials note, the Osprey is not a helicopter.

 

The hybrid, “though worse at autorotation than most helicopters, also has a glide landing capability that no helicopter possesses,” wrote Maj. Eric Dent, the Corps’ aviation spokesman, in an information paper about “inaccuracies” in Time’s article.

 

The Osprey has unusually thick wings, which give the aircraft lift at very low air speeds and allow it to glide at speeds as low as 40 knots. A hovering Osprey doesn’t need to fully convert to airplane mode to leverage this advantage. A small tilt on the nacelles does the trick, allowing the bird to glide to the ground as well as, if not better than, other fixed-wing aircraft, Walters said.

 

The autorotation wording was dropped from the requirement in 2004, when Corps officials changed it to say only that the Osprey must perform a survivable emergency landing in the event both engines are lost.

 

Time described the change as a failure by engineers to rewrite the laws of physics.

Weaponry

 

There’s also the issue of defensive weaponry. The Ospreys that press reports say are now operating in Iraq, all with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, are equipped with M240G medium machine guns pointed out the back ramp, ready to spray hundreds of 7.62mm bullets into a hot landing zone.

 

Retired Gen. James Jones, former commandant of the Marine Corps, told Time he’d always wanted the Osprey to have a forward-mounted gun, a .50-caliber under the nose — something he never pulled off as the Corps’ top Marine.

 

Jones thinks all assault support aircraft should have forward-facing weaponry, according to the article. He described it to Time as a fundamental belief stemming from his Vietnam War experience: Biggest and baddest is best. A spokesman from Jones’ office said the retired general was unavailable to comment for this article.

 

The Time article quoted Jones as saying, “A rear-mounted gun is better than no gun at all, but I don’t know how much better.”

 

But Walters said the Osprey’s rear machine gun is the same weapon system the Corps has in every assault support aircraft, none of which has guns facing forward.

 

Over the past five years, side gunners firing from CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan “found that most of the threat was on the ramp,” Walters said.

 

He said Jones wasn’t the only Marine to stand by a forward gun on principle.

 

“It’s an emotional issue for a lot of people,” Walters said. “I can come up with a scenario where it would be valuable, but we haven’t seen it in five years of combat.”

 

That doesn’t necessarily rule out more firepower in the future, though. The Marine Corps has allocated funds to pursue a forward-firing, “all-quadrant gun,” Walters said.

 

A prototype of such a weapon was displayed last week at the Modern Day Marine Expo in Quantico, Va. That weapon, the Remote Guardian System developed by international defense contractor BAE Systems, could be hard-wired into the Osprey’s avionics and deliver accurate, sustained fire throughout the entire flight envelope, according to a corporate release.

Performance problems

 

The Time article also said a 2006 incident — described by military officials as an uncontrolled takeoff — was the apparent result of a computer glitch that caused an Osprey to rise 25 feet into the air “on its own” before crashing back to earth. The article goes on to cite the example as just one in a series of problems throughout the Osprey’s development, including a “flawed computer chip” and “bad switches.”

 

But Corps officials insist the 2006 incident had nothing to do with computer malfunction. It was a maintenance mistake, Dent said.

 

“Two wires were accidentally cross-connected when reinstalled after maintenance,” he said. “There was neither a design problem, nor a software glitch.”

 

But that’s not to say the Osprey hasn’t had performance problems.

 

“Nobody has ever sent an aircraft that combines the characteristics of an airplane and a helicopter into combat before, so of course you’re going to have development challenges that you wouldn’t encounter on a more conventional airframe,” said Loren Thompson, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington think tank. Thompson, who is no relation to Time’s reporter, has followed the Osprey program closely over the years and posted a scathing rebuttal to the Time piece on Lexington’s Web site.

 

“Whatever you may think about the way the Marine Corps has gone about developing the [Osprey], the notion that it would deliberately field a dangerous or an inadequate airplane is simply preposterous,” he said.

 

A report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation in 2000 found the Osprey operationally effective but not operationally suitable, according to Time. Walters said that the article doesn’t mention, however, the August 2005 report by the same office that gives the Osprey thumbs up in both columns.

 

“You could have written that article in 2003,” Walters said of the Time piece. “It didn’t acknowledge the really good work that has happened over the last four or five years.”

 

In a blog about his appearance in the article, Military.com editor Ward Carroll, who spent three years as the Osprey’s spokesman, wrote that Time sensationalized his concern that as many as six aircraft might crash during the Osprey’s first year in combat.

 

Carroll wrote that he spent a half-hour on the phone with Time’s Mark Thompson talking about the aircraft’s potential, “including my belief that the airplane really could change everything in terms of how the Marine Corps fights.”

 

“Thompson left out the part where I indicated my support and hopes for VMM-263’s success and resultantly I am presented as a ‘critic,’ ” he wrote. “That’s what I get for attempting a complete thought with a reporter who’s reverse-engineering a story.”

 

Carroll — who wrote that the article’s title, “A Flying Shame,” is “a pretty good indication of the writer’s thesis” — isn’t alone in taking umbrage at the story.

 

“The article goes over issues that are old, long-since addressed, and it is a fundamentally inaccurate assessment of the [Osprey],” said Jack Satterfield, program spokesman for Osprey manufacturer Boeing.

 

Walters expressed disappointment over negative attention caused by inaccuracies published in Time, which circulates more than 3 million copies weekly, because he doubts whether vindication will be as public.

 

“The first time this thing picks up a wounded soldier or Marine and gets him the medical attention that saves his life because of speed and range, you’ll never hear about it,” he said.