V-22 Osprey won’t be grounded, even after dozens of crashes, 54 fatalities

Aug. 28 (UPI) -- At the weekend, a V-22 Osprey aircraft crashed on Melville Island north of Darwin in Australia. Of the 23 U.S. Marine Corps personnel onboard, three died, five were taken to Darwin hospital in a serious condition, and some others had more minor injuries.

The craft was part of the Marine Rotational Force -- Darwin, a unit of up to 2,500 U.S. Marines that has been based in the Northern Territory from April to October each year since 2012. This is the most serious accident in that 11-year period.

The Osprey is a relatively new type of aircraft, with a patchy track record for safety. But the advantages it offers for the military -- and perhaps for civilians -- mean we will only be seeing more of it in the future.

About the V-22 Osprey

The Osprey has long been controversial, initially for its high cost and long development time, and in recent years for safety concerns.

These issues reflect the revolutionary design of the craft: It is a kind of plane-helicopter hybrid called a tiltrotor, which means the wing tilts upward for takeoff and landing and back down again for level flight. If this sounds complex, it is.

The Osprey is at the leading edge of aviation technology, with nothing else in operational service like it. The aircraft was built to replace helicopters and is used by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force.

Why it's useful

The Marine Corps is by far the largest user, being attracted to the aircraft's much longer range, much higher speed and good carrying capacity compared to conventional helicopters.

The Marine Corps is famous for 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 amphibious ships to remain hundreds of miles 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 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.

Patchy safety record

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, the U.S. Air Force grounded its 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 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 10 crashes and 24 deaths.

Two of these 10 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.

Will it get safer?

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 the U.S. military'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.

Future tiltrotors

This is important as the Osprey looks set to be the first of its type, not the last. The U.S. Army 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 the United States and 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 a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.