V-22's fate in the balance

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The future of the V-22 Osprey, one of the most controversial aircraft in U.S. military history, likely will be decided over the next year in a series of unusually rigorous tests at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md.

A V-22 Osprey undergoes sea trials about 60 miles from Norfolk, Va. The aircraft's fate will be determined next year when it undergoes a series of rigorous tests. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones went so far as to call 2003 a "make or break" year for the V-22. Advertiser library photo

The Marine Corps is deeply committed to the novel hybrid aircraft, which can take off and land vertically like a helicopter but, when in flight, can tilt forward its two big rotors and fly like a regular airplane.

Compared with the workhorse CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, said Marine Col. Dan Schultz, the V-22 program manager, the Osprey can fly twice as fast, at more than twice the altitude, with three times the payload and four times the range. What's more, it boasts aircraftlike acceleration, going from zero to 220 knots in 18 seconds, handy for getting out of a hot landing zone.

To the Marine Corps, the plane is absolutely essential to operating in the 21st century.

The problem is that the Osprey, after nearly two decades in development, suffered two high-profile crashes in 2000, killing 23 Marines and casting grave doubt over the program. A subsequent scandal involving doctored maintenance records resulted in three Marine officers' being found guilty of misconduct.

In addition, the program has been expensive, even by Pentagon standards. Plans call for the Marines, Special Operations Command and Navy to buy about 450 Ospreys at a cost of about $40 billion, or about $80 million per plane, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a defense consulting group.

To prove that the aircraft isn't a misbegotten and expensive experiment, the Marines, Navy and Air Force are working together at Patuxent River to conduct flight tests.

Some are designed to ensure that problems such as troubled flight-control software have been fixed. Other tests, such as flying in formation, are aimed at proving to critics that perceived problems — such as the concern that the planes cannot descend closely together in safety — actually don't exist. The program is also testing changes that resulted from studies of the crashes, which found, among other things, that parts of the engines were difficult for maintenance crews to reach and that chafing rendered some hydraulic lines dangerously thin.

"We have spent a lot of time trying to fix what's wrong with this airplane," Schultz said in a recent interview. "We have front-loaded the test program. We have all of the really hard stuff up front."

Probably the most important series of tests will be the "high rate of descent" program — that is, coming in toward the ground fast. "This has had more press than just about anything," Schultz said.

An excessive rate of descent also was found to be a major cause of the April 2000 crash in Arizona that killed 19 Marines. The V-22 that crashed was descending at about 2,500 feet per minute when one of its rotors was caught in a phenomenon called "vortex ring state," when it wasn't getting any lift, Schultz said. When the other rotor continued to gain lift, he said, "the aircraft rolled over and inverted."

Next year the Osprey will be put through months of testing of fast descents. Eventually some will be flown downward at 1,500 feet per minute while maneuvering. Then, to answer the concern of critics that the dangerous vortex ring state can be caused by the wake turbulence of one V-22 flying in front of another — a view Schultz rejects — there also will be multiaircraft tests of fast descents. "No one has ever done a year of high rate of descent testing on helicopters," he said.

A review of the December 2000 crash that killed four Marines in part blamed an error in the flight control software. Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Gross, the chief government test pilot, said that all the software has been reviewed, and some has been redesigned or modified.

Some skeptics have expressed concern that the V-22 would only be deemed airworthy by placing new constraints on its operations that would reduce its usefulness. But Gross said they are not finding new limits on how it is flown. "I believe we will take the already large flight envelope and expand it further," he said.

Addressing another concern, they also are finding ways to make the aircraft less of a target for the enemy. Schultz said the V-22s' engines have heat suppressors. He also disclosed that newer versions of the aircraft are being painted with a new kind of paint that disperses heat and reduces the ability of heat-seeking missiles to acquire them as targets.

The most important of the doubters is Pentagon acquisition czar Edward "Pete" Aldridge, an aerodynamicist by training who is said still to have grave doubts about the feasibility of the aircraft. Aldridge said at a Pentagon briefing last month that the V-22 now has "a good flight test program," but he quickly added, "I am still as concerned about the program as I have always been."

The next year's intense series of tests raises the question why it wasn't all done before, in 1997 through 1999, when the Osprey supposedly was tested and certified ready to go — and then had two high-profile crashes. Schultz said he does not try to answer that question. "My job is: What is wrong, and how do you fix it?"

Jones, the Marine commandant, said that "there are several things that in hindsight we wish we had done better." Among other things, he said, "we weren't quite as rigid as we should have been, in hindsight, in demanding that the quality be there."

This time, Schultz said, the military is aware that the program is on a razor's edge.

"There's no margin of error for us," he said. "We've used up all our chances."