Posted on 05/20/2002 9:21:14 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
As flight tests resume for the troubled tilt-rotor craft, the Navy has lowered its performance requirements.
By Joseph Neff, Staff Writer
The V-22 Osprey, the U.S. military's futuristic tilt-rotor aircraft, is about to return to the sky for test flights after being grounded for 17 months.A pair of crashes in 2000 that killed 23 Marines and a record-doctoring scandal last year are history now, defense officials say.
"All of the problems with the program have been fixed," Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said in an interview with Pentagon reporters early this month.
The Navy fixed some of the problems, however, by rewriting key requirements -- in effect, by moving the goal posts. In addition, much remains unknown about what may be the Osprey's most dangerous flaw: a tendency to roll over when it enters an unstable aerodynamic condition called "vortex ring state."
"They've got a lot of work to do," said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester from 1994 to 2001. "I'm not against the Osprey, but I've never seen this much work required at this stage of an aircraft development."
Among the altered specifications are these:
*The Navy no longer requires that the V-22 be able to land safely in helicopter mode without power.
*Required protection from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons has been eliminated.
*A requirement for "combat maneuvering" capability has been watered down.
*Reliability standards have been changed and lowered.
*A requirement that troops be able to exit the cabin door at low altitude via a rope or rope ladder has been eliminated.
Based at Marine Corps Air Station New River near Jacksonville, the Osprey is a revolutionary aircraft that takes off like a helicopter, then tilts its huge rotors forward and flies like an airplane. The Marines are counting on the Osprey to be their 21st-century transport aircraft. In airplane mode, it can fly farther and faster than the aging helicopters it is designed to replace.
The Osprey has been grounded since December 2000, shortly after four Marines were killed in a crash near Camp Lejeune. A crash earlier that year in Arizona killed 19 Marines.
The damage continued to pile up in 2001 when it was disclosed that a Marine officer had ordered the falsification of records to make the Osprey look more reliable.
The program has been plagued by skipped testing, cost overruns, missed deadlines and a pattern of not being able to perform as required. According to the Pentagon's latest acquisition reports, the Osprey program's cost now stands at $46 billion, or $101 million per V-22. The price tag at the time of the North Carolina crash was $89 million.
Cutting the specs
The Osprey's ability to land safely without power while in helicopter mode has been in question for years. This ability, known as autorotation, is a fundamental safety feature of all helicopters, including the military models the Osprey is intended to replace.
As a helicopter descends after losing power, the up-rushing air spins the rotors, providing enough lift for the pilot to control the speed and direction of the descent. In the Vietnam War, thousands of lives were saved when helicopters autorotated safely to the ground after engine failure or damage by enemy fire. The original V-22 specifications required autorotation ability, but last year, NASA scientists and the manufacturer, Bell-Boeing, stated flatly that the Osprey's rotor design made autorotation impossible.
The Navy cited cost and technical difficulties as the reason for dropping the nuclear, chemical and biological weapon protection requirement. For years, the Navy, Marines and Bell-Boeing had boasted that the V-22 would be "the only U.S. tactical transport aircraft with designed-in nuclear, biological and chemical protection."
Coyle said he was puzzled by the elimination of this requirement, which would protect crew members when they had no warning of a chemical or biological attack, and no time to suit up in biohazard gear.
"I think they don't want to go back to the drawing board," Coyle said. "They have to redesign the door seals, windows and ramp, to go back ... and essentially create a new aircraft."
The requirement that the V-22 be capable of "air combat maneuvering" was downgraded to one requiring "defensive maneuvering." Marine officials say air combat maneuvering is akin to aerial dogfighting. Under the new requirement, even when the Osprey encounters hostile fire, the pilot is prohibited from going outside the craft's "flight envelope" -- the set of limitations, described in the Osprey's flight manual, within which it can operate safely.
For the Osprey, the flight envelope is very restrictive, much more so than a helicopter's, said Jim Crouse, a retired Army helicopter pilot who is now an aviation lawyer in Raleigh.
The Osprey must descend slowly when landing, because of its tendency to enter vortex ring state, a condition during which a helicopter can't keep hovering because the turbulence it creates makes the craft unstable.
Also, the flight manual prohibits the pilot from abruptly moving the craft in two directions at once -- pulling up and turning at the same time, for example. Pilots can't "jink," pilot lingo for dodging fire by moving suddenly and unpredictably.
"You'll have to risk ground fire and hostile fire," Crouse said. "You can't maneuver in this craft."
Even before the latest set of revisions, the reliability requirements for the Osprey were more lenient in some key areas than the actual performance of the old helicopters it is meant to replace. For example, the Navy requires the Osprey to be able to log an average of at least 17 hours of flight before something happens that requires a mission to be aborted, a threshold the Osprey has barely met. Although 40 years old, the CH-46 helicopter averages 39 hours between aborted missions.
Some of the latest changes lower the bar even more. One altered requirement, for example, is that the Osprey now must average 0.9 hours between failures in its electronic or mechanical systems, down from 1.4 hours.
The fast-rope requirement from the cabin door was dropped because the craft's downwash -- the blast of air from the rotors -- has the force of hurricane winds. The downwash can blow men off ropes or suck a rope ladder up toward the rotors. "Fast-roping," where troops wearing special gloves, slide down ropes from a hovering helicopter, is a standard technique for unloading personnel in areas where helicopters can't land -- such as rooftops, a forest or in water -- and for rescue missions.
The Osprey can only fast-rope Marines out the back ramp, where visibility and coordination between pilot and crew become a problem. "Our preferred way is to go out the door, so both the pilot and the first ropemaster can look at the target, rather than have target come into view underneath the ramp," said Steve Connolly, the chief V-22 test pilot for the Air Force Special Operations Command. "There are work-arounds for this."
The strong downwash concerns U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, a Nevada Republican with 27 years' experience as a pilot in the Air Force and commercial aviation.
"When you do a fast-rope or ladder hovering at 200 feet, the downwash, at 125-mile-per-hour velocity, will push the individual under water," Gibbons said. "It will make it literally impossible to do search and rescue. It'll blow them away."
Altitude limits
Gibbons, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is skeptical about the Osprey for other reasons as well. In recent months, a succession of Air Force and Marine officers have contended that the V-22 would have been an ideal aircraft for the war in Afghanistan. In testimony to Congress, generals have argued that Afghanistan's high altitudes have taxed military helicopters. In Operation Anaconda, the biggest engagement between American and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, the altitude of the battlefield ranged from 8,000 to 13,000 feet.
Gibbons doesn't buy this argument. The V-22 can fly as an airplane at high altitudes but not as a helicopter -- and it needs to hover to take off or land.
The V-22 can't hover at 10,000 feet or higher. And when hovering at 8,000 feet, it can carry only a small payload -- the equivalent of an hour's worth of fuel, the crew and seven Marines. Gibbons estimated the Osprey's upper limit for hovering at 9,000 feet. "I'm not sure it's going to perform at those altitudes as would other helicopters 40 years old," he said.
The Navy's flight manuals show that the Osprey's ability to carry weight and hover begins to drop off above 4,000 feet.
Lt. Col. Mike Westman, a Marine V-22 pilot stationed at New River air station, next to Camp Lejeune, said the Marines can work around the V-22's limitations and carry out missions at high altitudes.
"It's all just a math problem," Westman said. "You could take less fuel, or aerially refuel if necessary, or take less men."
Connolly, the Air Force test pilot, said the Osprey can take a crew of 18 special operations soldiers in a 500-mile radius if the point of departure and the destination are at 4,000 feet or lower.
Flight tests will resume in late May or early June at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. The testing, which will take up to three years, will later expand to Marine and Air Force bases and Navy ships. The military and Bell-Boeing will be paying extra attention to tests designed to show how the Osprey behaves when descending quickly.
The Osprey has shown a tendency to roll over when it descends rapidly in helicopter mode at low forward speeds. This phenomenon, known as vortex ring state or VRS, occurs when a rotorcraft descends into its own turbulence and the rotor system is processing the same air continuously and does not produce enough lift to keep hovering.
When a helicopter enters vortex ring state, the pilot usually can easily escape by dipping the craft's nose down and flying out of the column of disturbed air.
But the V-22 behaves differently: It quickly rolls over on its back. This was discovered with tragic results in the April 2000 crash in Arizona, when an Osprey attempting a landing abruptly rolled over and smashed nose-first into the tarmac, killing 19 Marines.
Tom MacDonald, Bell-Boeing's chief test pilot for the V-22, recently said that flight tests at high altitudes have come up with the solution to vortex ring state: Don't descend too rapidly when in helicopter mode.
"In each and every case, we had no problem recovering [from] it and flying away, but we weren't 300 feet off the ground," MacDonald told Aerospace Daily.
Pilots can recover by tilting the engines and rotors forward, toward airplane position, MacDonald said. Tests show this technique requires 400 to 1,200 feet of altitude for the craft to recover.
"Warning pilots and training them about it is going to be more than adequate," he said. "I don't think anybody's ever going to get into this again."
Yet NASA scientists do not share the test pilot's optimism that the problem has been solved. NASA was one of several expert groups called on to study the Osprey last year at the military's request.
In a presentation obtained by The News & Observer that NASA refused to release, NASA scientists characterized their knowledge of vortex ring state in tilt-rotors as being in a state of "pre-understanding."
"The problem is virgin territory," said their report, "Analysis Prospects for VRS."
"It is effectively a new problem and that will take time. ... Initial roadblock is incomplete knowledge of the physics."
The report reminded its readers that some aerodynamic problems involving helicopters have taken decades to resolve. Even after 50 years, for example, engineers have yet to perfect their ability to predict hover performance in a helicopter.
"Don't count your chickens," the report said. "Humility is advisable."
In command of the facts?
Marine and Air Force leaders have repeatedly contended that the Osprey is tailor-made for the war in Afghanistan. However, the V-22 flight manual shows that the Osprey would have been of little use in Operation Anaconda, the largest single battle involving U.S. troops, which was fought in March at altitudes of 8,000 to 13,000 feet. The Osprey cannot hover above 10,000 feet and has limited ability to carry passengers and fuel when landing and taking off at 8,000.
Gen. James E. Jones, Marine Corps commandant, testified March 5 before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on sea power. "I think that we have the potential of bringing something into our combat capability that will, in the case of another Afghanistan, completely transform the way we do business. And, had we had [the V-22 Osprey] this time, it is clear that we would not have had the number of mishaps that were caused by altitude and very, very demanding flight profiles that our helicopters are simply not well-equipped to do."
Lt. Gen. Paul Hester, leader of the Air Force Special Operations Command, touted the Osprey as a substitute for military helicopters in an Associated Press article May 3. The article noted that U.S. helicopters had difficulty operating in the Afghan mountains. "Helicopters were never designed nor thought to work at those kinds of altitudes," Hester said. The problem underscored the need for an aircraft that can fly higher, faster and longer distances than helicopters, he said.
"Our hope is that the CV-22, which is the industry’s answer to those requirements, will in fact prove out during the testing program," Hester said.
Hester made similar remarks in February, as reported by the publication Defense Daily on Feb. 13. "The terrain and elevation in Afghanistan has validated our need for the capability of an aircraft like the CV-22," Hester was quoted as saying at a National Defense Industrial Association symposium. " … I am excited that testing is going to begin soon with our Marine brothers’ [MV-22 variant]. We need to get on with making sure this program becomes a reality."
Gen. Charles R. Holland, commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, testified about the Osprey’s potential for use in Afghanistan on March 12 to a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. "We need tilt-rotor technology, we need the technology that comes with the CV-22. I am even more convinced after seeing the operations in Afghanistan on why a CV-22 would best fit. It is always great to have more options for a joint task force commander. ... Helicopters do well low to the ground, but when the terrain is as high as it is in Afghanistan, that adds additional peril not only to the pilots but also to the capabilities of the equipment that we are using. So you think about a CV-22 in that environment."
The Osprey was discussed at length at a meeting April 11 of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military procurement and military research and development.
Lt. Gen. Edward Hanlon, Combat Development Command, U.S. Marine Corps: "That’s why we're so excited about the MV-22 because ... of its speed and its ability to go to altitude and its ability to put Marines very, very quickly into an LZ [landing zone] and get out. We think that will be a very big combat enhancer . … The other thing that I think was very important about the MV-22 [is] when you get into winter weather high altitude, that's when helicopters ... get very limited on you, and an aircraft like the MV-22, with its speed and its ability to go high, would really have helped us in that regard."
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter: "On the search-and-rescue mission, the V-22 … you didn't have good hover capability at 9,000 feet or so. Is that right? You couldn't stabilize and just hover for a bit there at 9,000 feet."
Maj. Gen. Mike Hough, assistant deputy Marine commandant for aviation: "No, sir. It can. It can hover at 9,000 feet. It can do all those sorts of things. ... You’d have to have to do some things different because of the characteristics of the airplane, but it can do that safely."
Maj. Rick Long, Marine Corps spokesman in Quantico, Va., quoted in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 1 : "The environment in which we’re operating in Afghanistan points out the advantage of an aircraft such as the tilt-rotor V-22. You have a country that on its low end is almost a mile high and in the mountains rises to 18,000 to 19,000 feet. Those are hard altitudes for [existing] helicopters to operate in."
It's OK if it crashes.
Eventually, they will sell the entire Osprey program to NASA and NASA will use them to crash on Mars, NASA's traditional crash site.
I wonder how they will coerce convince the pilot to fly it?
Dyncorp mechanics have been performing maintenance on this aircraft in Patuxent River, MD and Cherry Point, NC for years. Meanwhile the experienced mechanics langish and get surplussed in home facilities.
Chinook helicopter work is now 80% outsourced as well. You get what you pay for. Management has lost control and it seems that lowering the standard is the only way they can establish quality control in a small sense.
I would not want my son to fly in anything made for defense in this era of outsourcing.
I think the unions were, in part, responsible for much of their own demise. Workers became complacent and did not give a 40 hour work week as benefits and demands increased. Management also did not do their job by requiring performance from it's workers. But the American public is the real loser here. Standards have been lowered and each outsource vendor looks for another low cost vendor to complete the work.
It is a sad state of affairs. Yes, one more crash and I think this program will be cancelled.
Exactly what the airforce did to the B-1,
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