Some key points.
The V-22 Osprey’s range and speed, the twin talents of the aircraft most heavily promoted by the U.S. Marine Corps, are revealing themselves in Afghanistan, as readiness and reliability numbers begin to climb steadily throughout the fleet.
Lt. Gen. George Trautman, deputy commandant for aviation, says the level of hostile action experienced by the V-22s in Afghanistan is slightly higher than in Iraq. He calls Afghanistan “a different fight. There’s more kinetic work to be done.” Yet he takes exception to those who criticized the aircraft’s performance in Iraq. “Uninformed critics said we babied the aircraft [there],” he says, noting that the V-22 primarily ferried passengers and cargo, the primary mission of assault-support aircraft. “Because peace broke out, it didn’t do much in the way of [flying] into the heart of enemy assaults.”
…during major operations in Now Zad, in the Helmand Province, Marine Corps’ Ospreys arrived from different directions at 3 a.m. “with speed and range the enemy didn’t expect,” Trautman says. “The Osprey was the most important participant in getting a reinforced company into that town in short order.” More important, the Osprey flew “two loads in the time it took the CH-53 to do one.”
The aircraft has also been beefed up recently with an all-quadrant gun, which rolls on and off. There are five guns in theater for 10 V-22s, and Trautman anticipates more in the future.
The Osprey’s readiness rate has hovered at about 62% for months, but operations in Afghanistan have seen that number rising steadily, according to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway, who cites numbers in the 70-80% range. “It’s on that trajectory” to 90%, he claimed enthusiastically at the Pentagon last month.
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January 13, 2010 at 9:20 pm