The acting commandant of the Marine Corps on Thursday confirmed the service has kept its fleet of MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft grounded due to a deadly November mishap, but he is confident they are a good platform.
In December, the Department of the Navy grounded all V-22 Ospreys across the Navy and Marine Corps after Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) grounded its own fleet following a Nov. 29 crash in Japan that killed all eight airmen aboard (Defense Daily
, Dec. 8, 2023).
Gen. Christopher Mahoney, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps (ACMC) and currently the acting commandant, said he guarantees all the mishap investigation data will be fully analyzed in the Marine Corps to get the aircraft flying again as soon as possible.
“Right now, the grounding message stands. But we’ll push, as the investigation comes to its fruition, to safely and responsibly get that unbelievable platform back in the air with as much confidence as we had before this mishap.”
While the V-22s are grounded, Mahoney confirmed the Marine Corps has been using CH-53K King Stallion helicopters and “other sort of methods to connect, to logistically supply the 26th [Marine Expeditionary Unit] and others.”
Mahoney admitted that if the V-22s stay grounded for too long, there is a competence and safety issue with making sure pilots, maintainers, and observer/crew chiefs retain their expertise and practice with the platforms.
“So hopefully we won’t get to that point, we’ll be able to determine the safe return, once again responsibly to flight, and we’ll keep them safe and we will make sure that they’re competent and confident as they are right now.”
Outside this mishap and grounding, Mahoney was a booster of the Osprey overall.
“I’ve flown the platform, I’ve flown in it. And it is, to me, it’s truly revolutionary. Let me get this straight – we’re going to take off vertically, we’re going to put a heavy payload on it, we’re gonna fly 1,000 miles, and we’re gonna land where nobody else can, faster, higher with a better payload?”
He also admitted the Osprey had earlier issues with hard clutch engagements, “but we have rectified that to a 99 percentile eventuality of not happening with input quill assemblies being replaced at the 800-hour mark and other things that we do to make sure that the airplane is tactically capable, ready and safe.”
Last year, the V-22 Osprey Joint Program Office (JPO) (PMA-275) started by recommended time limits for the services using the Ospreys to minimize damage with the engine clutch issue, pending replacement parts and a longer term fix (Defense daily, Feb. 6, 2023).
A hard clutch engagement problem was a problem in the input quill assembly, part of the proprotor gearbox housing the aircraft clutch,. In hard clutch engagements, the engine-driven clutch releases from the rotor system and suddenly reengages, sending a pulse into the drive train that can cause damage.
In September 2022, AFSOC grounded its CV-22 fleet for over two weeks due to the clutch slippage issue.
Separately, in September the Justice Department said Osprey maker Boeing [BA] agreed to pay the government over $8 million to resolve allegations the company did not comply with some contractual manufacturing specifications on composite components (Defense Daily, Sept. 29, 2023).
The Osprey is built by a partnership between Boeing and Textron’s [TXT] Bell.