Death trap: the Osprey to take flight?

AP News via Yahoo News
OK, say we have this very cool looking helicopter/airplane hybrid that just keeps crashing. Common sense says, "Well, if the thing isn't working, drop it."

Well, I guess common sense doesn't apply to the Marines and their choice of the few, the brave, the proud...just build the damn thing.

Link to background information on the V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft and a video of one of many crashes.

RALEIGH, N.C.--The Marine Corps plans to send the troubled Osprey aircraft into combat zones within a year and is activating a squadron of the tilt-rotor planes this week.

The Osprey, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, had a troubled start.

Four Marines died in a 2000 crash in North Carolina that was caused by a ruptured titanium hydraulic line. Nineteen others were killed in a crash that year in Arizona that investigators blamed on pilot error.

The military's spin on this bird.

A Marriage Set in Stone

It appears that history has repeated itself again. Officials appeared to be aiming this latest investigation towards pilot error. Is this to protect the mutually beneficial relationship by increasing public confidence in the Osprey?

* A Marine Corps spokesman said, "We're confident in the program because of the amount of testing we've done and the number of hours we've flown it. We've really put this aircraft through its paces."

* Spokeswoman for the Pentagon Marine Corps headquarters said, "We really don't feel there's a design flaw."

* Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Jones said, "These are certified airworthy aircraft."

* "We see no problems whatsoever with the aircraft", said Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle.

These and other similar statements laid the groundwork for an announcement that pilot error was indeed to blame. The pilots apparently made the Osprey descend too fast without enough forward motion.

The sad but true stories from the young men who flew the Osprey in its infancy:

This scenario can result in a "vortex ring state" which causes a helicopter to settle in its own downwash reducing the efficiency of its rotors. The helicopter then descends rapidly and can sometimes be impossible to escape.

The Vortex Ring State is a well-known phenomenon and pilots are extensively trained to avoid it. The two pilots of the crashed Osprey were Maj. John Brow and Maj. Brooks Gruber. They were experienced pilots that had flown many types of aircraft in their lifetimes. Gruber had 2,117 hours of flight experience, 86 of which were in the Osprey. Brow had a total of 3,777 flight hours, 97 of which were in the Osprey helicopter. The likelihood of these professional pilots getting themselves into the Vortex Ring State seems very remote.

A 24-year-old victim's mother said that her son had voiced concerns about flying the Ospreys. "He enlisted to be a career man, and they killed him. They wanted him to be a guinea pig for these new airplanes."

The father of another victim, Staff Sgt. William Bryan Nelson said his son considered the plane, "experimental" and that it frequently encountered mechanical problems. "He told me it was so fragile, he didn't think it was ready to fly yet."

Engineers and pilots involved with the Osprey program have expressed their concerns that previous questions will be revived about the safety of the aircraft. If the aircraft is truly airworthy, why are they worried about questions? Perhaps they do not like the answers.

It looks more and more here like the Marine Corp put all their eggs into this one basket, and now they are stuck with a questionable craft that has to work.

The Osprey helicopter is certainly a revolutionary aircraft with no other worthy rival. Perhaps this is because the Marines put all their research and development funding into the Osprey and did not leave themselves any other alternatives.

The relationship between Bell and the Marines is extremely strong because of the amount of money and other benefits they contribute to each other. However, the politics behind the whole Osprey program highlights some questionable actions that have been swept under the proverbial rug. Was pilot error really to blame in these last two tragedies, or was the Osprey program being protected? Their families deserve to know. They have the right to know!

This looks like a major-league case of mismanagement and a push on a technology that may have not matured enough yet for combat.

You have to love military spending. So much spent, often for so little in the end.