Watching clips of the Osprey in Marine training on and off battleships.
If helicopters for insertion only, therefore, Osprey for what?
If helicopters for insertion and attack and self defense, therefore, Osprey for what?
Is it stand-off distance? Height? Speed and evasion? Armament fortification?
I had kind of written off the Osprey as a service vehicle during its interminable budgetary suspended animation–sort of like Yiddish, which has been called the language which has been about to die for 1000 years–and was unaware, and still am, of its deployment.
In fact, I first started re-thinking about it when I noticed that Trump’s Marine One short hop “motorcade” consisted of Ospreys. (Vid cite available if anyone interested.)
ETA: It just occurred to me that the OP questions probably were the OP questions of those posters in the big SD GQ in the Reel World, the US Armed Forces Budgetary committees.
The Osprey got its start after President Carter’s failed mission to free the Iran hostages in 1980. The military wanted something that could take off and land like a helicopter but could fly as fast as a plane, and could also have a longer range like a plane.
That was its original goal, anyway.
During development, a bunch of folks kept adding requirements, which caused costs to skyrocket (other factors caused costs to skyrocket as well). The Osprey has also suffered from reliability problems.
While the Osprey has taken a lot of (probably valid) criticism for its cost and reliability, the fact remains that it is significantly faster than a conventional helicopter and can fly significantly further than a conventional helicopter, while still retaining the advantages of vertical takeoff and landing like a helicopter as well as being able to carry a decent amount of troops or cargo.
It’s gotten a lot of use in the Middle East where its speed and range make it better than conventional helicopters for rescuing downed pilots or quickly responding to changes in battlefield conditions. The extended range has also allowed it to deliver supplies quickly in emergency situations.
While the Osprey has definitely had its critics, it has been successful enough that Bell Helicopter has developed a similar aircraft called the V-280 Valor. The Valor has learned a lot from the Osprey program. The Valor is a simpler design which should make it more reliable as well as less expensive. The last I heard, the Valor should be having its first test flights soon.
The assertion is that Ospreys are bigger enough and faster enough that 3 can do the work of 5 conventional helos.
They’re longer-ranged enough that they can perform missions deeper into enemy territory or let their carrier/base be farther back in the safe(er) zone. Which makes some missions possible that were not before.
The greater speed and quieter operation means they can cruise through incrementally more heavily defended airspace than can helos. Again enabling missions that were prohibitive before.
In my reading of the trade press it appears that 2 & 3 are real. Though they may not be especially relevant to the relatively mild battlefields the US is engaged over today.
As to #1, the tradeoff has been reliability. 3 flyable Ospreys can indeed do the work of 5 flyable helos. But if you need to buy 6 helos to have 5 flyable or 6 Ospreys to have 3 flyable, suddenly the hoped-for fiscal benefit dies on the hangar floor bleeding a pool of hydraulic fluid.
That reliability has been the problem for a long time. I have been reading more favorable noises in the last year or two. How much that’s real and how much that’s smoke and mirrors is a good question.
One thing’s for sure. If the maintenance budget for any system is even slightly underfunded, the effect is an adverse snowball of ever-growing unavailability and ever-decreasing reliability over time. The fix is a massive infusion of all the cash you didn’t spend plus some more, and a break in the op tempo long enough to do the work you can suddenly afford.
It seems some of that remediation is going on now and has been for a couple years. The payoff is just now starting to come in.
Vastly quieter in cruise. Not so quiet while hovering. Also the effect of greater speed is that any given area only absorbs a little noise while it quickly goes by.
Which increases the odds nobody notices a brief whining noise as compared to being subjected to 20 minutes of “Whop Whop Whop” as a Huey ever so slowly first heads towards your position, goes past, then ever so slowly fades into the distance.
Is the V/STOL configuration scalable much? Would it be possible to have a V/STOL 747? There wouldn’t be any point for civilian applications but an E-3 or E-8 that could take off a carrier could be useful.
Like others have said, speed and range. The range of the Osprey is impressive for a VTOL aircraft just on internal fuel, but they’re also capable of aerial refueling, which vastly expands their range. The Marines are even planning on using their Ospreys as aerial tankers with a roll-on / roll-off refueling system called VARS
Along with speed and range The Osprey has a higher ceiling. It’s a less widespread need but in Afghanistan helicopters, especially the UH-60 Blackhawk, sometimes had to fly around some of the high mountain ridges they couldn’t fly over. That can make the slowness and range of the helicopters an even bigger issue since they have to take even longer routes.
The Osprey can’t hover outside ground effect as high as either dedicated helicopter. It’s better for flying over high terrain to get someplace quickly. It can’t land/takeoff from some of the places at high altitudes that the helicopters can, though.
I don’t keep up on a day-to-day basis on this, but I recall reading that the Marines have an operational availability rate in the low 70s when deployed with an Osprey. For comparison purposes, the overall CH-53 availability rate seems to be half of that, which seems to be driven by its age.
In addition to what others said (speed and range), the Navy added the requirements for the swiveling wings and folding rotor blades so that the Osprey could be stored compactly on a ship. Requirements for how much the aircraft would be able to lift and carry were also increased during development.
Which in turn led to the engineers trying to develop some serious bleeding edge systems tech in otherwise ordinary systems to make weight. Which pushed the state of the art way too hard for a vehicle that was already bleeding edge tech in the stuff that truly had to be innovated: the prop rotors, the nacelle /wing tilt and the flight control systems.
Deciding to make a bunch of what could have been off the shelf systems from bleeding edge first run TRL 6 (wiki) stuff was dumb. But WAS a predictable response to requirements pile-on while the vehicle was still 90% paper. And it was the only significant project that company had in the fire so it was “agree or starve.”
Didn’t they add a requirement to fly with one engine only (i.e. after one engine fails)? Of course, this means a complicated driveshaft & gearbox mechanism to allow either one (or both) of the engines to run both rotors. I seem to recall reading that as an example of a huge “requirements creep.”
I know it has the ability to fly on one engine, but I don’t know if that was part of the original design or if that was a requirement that was added later. It definitely makes the whole thing more complicated.
I’m not a pilot, so maybe one of our resident pilots can expand on this, but my understanding of it is that the Osprey doesn’t autorotate well, which is one of the reasons for the requirement to fly on one engine. I read somewhere that one of the Osprey pilots commented on its poor autorotation by simply saying that if both engines failed they could rotate back into plane mode and land like a plane. It seems to me that if you’re at a low speed and altitude and don’t have time to do that, you’re pretty well screwed.
I agree the V-22 is a compelling concept for long range combat search and rescue and special forces missions of similar profiles, ie the USAF CV-22 in the kind of numbers it has been purchased (MV-22’s could do basically the same, I’m pointing mainly to required numbers though). The problem is the lack of enough required units for those type missions to justify the development.
Therefore the development and production base of the a/c is mainly justified on the ‘basic’ MV-22 mission of replacing old CH-46 helicopters in the USMC for somewhat similar missions to those helicopters. This is where IMO the V-22 gets questionable. Not that those particular helo’s didn’t need replacing which they obviously did, but the gain in a tilt rotor for that mission v just buying new off the shelf helicopters. Of course the MV-22 still adds capability even to that mission…it had better for that kind of development and production cost. But does it add enough to justify the big step up in cost, specially given that the MV-22’s would often be still be tied to the capabilities of the same amphib groupings H-54 heavy lift helicopters? Those are fast and long ranged helicopters compared to the H-46 (even before the basically new CH-54K is considered) but still definitely in the helicopter range of capabilities. And tactical realities tend to limit how far inland you’d typically want to carry those troops, again especially without heavy equipment carried by the CH-54’s. IMO the answer is no, not really worth it overall.
Though now there’s a strong ‘water under the bridge’ argument, as well as the possibility that further iterations of the tilt rotor concept (like the V-280) will have more favorable cost/servicability characteristics. That could make them actually worth the cost over the whole range of missions of a transport helo, not just a great long range CSAR/SpecOps capability whose cost has to be spread across a whole fleet of a/c performing ‘regular’ combat transport duties where it’s not really worth it. But the V-280’s superior cost characteristics are not a proven fact yet.
Other that replacing all your references to “H-54” with “H-53” you’ve pretty much got it.
The USMC is in the classic cost/volume death spiral with the MV-22. If they’d bought enough to not have to work in mixed units with the CH-53 they’d not be hobbled by the CH-53’s relative shortcomings.
IMO it’s almost always a mistake for USMC to procure a unique weapon system not used in volume by the Army or USAF. Their total budget won’t support an economic buy of anything, not even rifles. If Army had replaced half their UH-60s and/or CH-47s with V-22s we’d be in a very different place on unit flyaway cost.
Also agree that the next gen high speed rotorcraft and tiltrotors should get the tech over the hump into workaday DoD utility. Rather than being a tech dev lab project that got prematurely loose into the wild.
From Osprey Wiki cite…
…By 2012, changes had been made to the V-22’s hardware, software, and procedures in response to hydraulic fires in the nacelles, vortex ring state control issues, and opposed landings.[50]
“opposed landings?”
ETA: A Happy and a Sweet one, to all Members o’ the T.
The V-22 has always had a requirement to be able to fly on one engine; the cross drive gearboxes & shafting has been present since the beginning of the program. Both proprotors MUST spin, otherwise the dissymmetry of lift would flip the aircraft out of controlled flight.
The V-22 does not have autorotation capability; the aerodynamics of it’s proprotor system don’t allow for it.
Nitpick: the CH-54 Tarhe (better-known to some as the “Skycrane”) hasn’t been active in the US military for a couple decades. I do believe you were referring to the CH-53E, which is in current service in the Marines, and the CH-53K.
Reading the ref cited by the wiki, they mean a landing where the enemy is nearby and is shooting at the V-22. So one of the mods was to install guns in quasi-turrets so it could shoot back. Originally it was an unarmed transport. As are many other military helos.
I agree unique major weapon systems procured mainly to a USMC requirement have a tendency not to justify themselves (MV-22, F-35B version arguably though that’s got an international dimension, various failed attempts at high tech LVTP-7 replacement, etc)
Though unfortunately it’s not guaranteed to be justified because a ‘major’ air service wants to develop it. The earlier mentioned Army JMR-TD (Joint Multirole Demonstrator-Technology Development) program, for which the Bell V-280 tiltrotor concept is a possibility, might be a program which refines the tiltrotor concept in cost and practicality, and on a larger production base, into something clearly worth it. Or it could end up another too expensive solution compared to just new conventional helicopters compared to the real advantages (same might even go for the more conventional helicopter-like Boeing/Sikorsky concept in JMR-TD). It might just continue the process of handing over the ex-US world market in military helicopters to non-US manufacturers, even if the US military is forced to go gold plate. I think it’s fair to be skeptical about it.
I have been very skeptical of every Army helo project since the original UH-60. They desparately want to go high tech. But they need thousands of units. That’s a darn hard circle to square.
So a window of opportunity in the budget see-saw comes up, their eyes get bigger than their wallet and they send out RFPs for Cosmorgasmic Future Aviation Concepts which 3 years later they realize are grossly unbuildable and/or unaffordable. So they skulk back to the think tank with tail between legs and try again 6 or 8 years later.
Poor old Bell is nearly bankrupted chasing these cycles that turn into, with no malice on the Army’s part, a bait and switch that’d make Lucy question her football yanking-away skills.
Meanwhile the various flavors of H-47, H-58, & H-60 get ever older and cruddier. Sustained, sorta, by an ever more expensive ever less effective series of Band-Aids
“quieter?”