I guess it's no longer the "flying shame".

Hustling The CV-22
May 1, 2008

The Marines wanted combat experience for their new aircraft, and they got it during the last six months. This enabled the Marines to find out what the V-22 did best. As expected, the higher speed and cruising altitude of the V-22 was most useful. Moving troops to where they are quickly needed, or getting badly wounded Marines to a hospital in time, were things the V-22 excelled at, moving at twice the speed of the helicopters previously used. Cruising at a higher altitude (10,000 feet or more) than helicopters, and moving faster, gave the enemy much less opportunity to get off a shot, much less score a hit. The heavy use also revealed which parts were likely to wear out when, something you never really find out until you get the aircraft into a combat zone.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsf/articles/20080501.aspx

I am glad the V-22 got its due it has proven the nay-sayers wrong.

hmmmm, would a well intentioned 'I TOLD YOU SO!' fit in here someplace?

I tried telling you guys but no one would listen ....................

BAE Systems expects US award for new V-22 360-degree gun

By Caitlin Harrington

06 May 2008

The US Navy's V-22 programme office is expected to award a contract to BAE Systems in early May for 14 Remote Guardian System gun kits, an official close to the V-22 programme told Jane's on 30 April.

How quickly the new gun system is deployed in combat will depend on how much, if any, additional operational testing the US Marine Corps and US Air Force want to do once they begin receiving the kits from August 2008, the official said.

MORE--
http://www.janes.com/news/defence/air/jdw/jdw080506_1_n.shtml

Operational testing huh? Just ship the darn things over to the Marine squadrons, they'll send back test results complete with video from YouTube!

The V-22 Osprey

I've seen and heard the Osprey fly. It's slow, it's very loud, it looks clumsy and sluggish, and it has already killed at least 30 people, none of whom was an enemy soldier. It is the worst possible aircraft to send into a war, but somehow the Osprey program cannot be scrapped.

The Osprey is particularly useless in wartime conditions because it is so loud. You can hear it coming long before it arrives. And apparently it is so completely unstable that it has to land very gently. It wouldn't surprise me to hear (someday in the near future) that a V-22 was brought down by a guy with a slingshot or a bow and arrow.

The latest:
V-22 Osprey combo-copter hits fresh tech snags. The famous V-22 "Osprey" tiltrotor plane-chopper combo is back in the news again for unhappy reasons, mere months after it had seemed to be finally putting its troubles behind it. A US project official has revealed to the press that the Osprey's engines are currently wearing out much too fast, to the point where it may need to be fitted with different powerplants.

US Marines: Osprey tiltrotor doing OK in Iraq. The troubled, revolutionary V-22 "Osprey" tiltrotor aircraft — which takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies from place to place like a fixed-wing plane — appears to have finally left most of its development snags behind it. The first operational Osprey squadron has been operating in Iraq for three months, initially under a news blackout. But there have been no mishaps so far, and chuffed military bigwigs have begun to allow reports out.

[To put it another way, the military manipulates the hapless news media, releasing information only when it makes the generals and their pet projects look good.]

Osprey is Iraq-bound. After years of delays and setbacks, the Marine Corps said yesterday [4/13/2007] that it plans to deploy its unconventional V-22 Osprey aircraft in military operations in Anbar province in Iraq in September.

War of the porkers: The Marine brass just wants their beloved Osprey hybrid helicopter, which has, in the past decade, done three things well: crashed, burned and caused its top guys to look like a bunch of liars.

If approved, Osprey program could take years to fix: The fourth fatal crash of the tilt-rotor aircraft in December, 2000, brought to 30 the number of people killed while flying the plane over two decades.

Bell Helicopter replaces CEO. A news release and e-mail to employees from Textron chairman Lewis Campbell hinted at unhappiness with aspects of Bell's performance. … Doubts about the safety and reliability of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, a joint venture of Bell and Boeing, have swirled for several years. The V-22 is built in Amarillo.

Study finds design flaws in V-22 Osprey. Hoping to re-energize congressional opposition to the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, critics of the controversial tilt-rotor aircraft released a study Thursday warning that the aircraft is plagued by inherent design flaws and will endanger U.S. lives when it goes into combat later this year.

V-22 Osprey: Deathtrap or deliverer? Months away from deployment, the debate surrounding the V-22 Osprey's safety, efficacy and reliability rages on. It's either the future of military rotorcraft or a $69 million deathtrap, and 23,000 flight hours last year alone have done little to narrow the gap between those two schools of thought.

V-22 Testing Turns up Trouble. The V-22 Osprey, which may deploy to Iraq with Marines this year, suffered problems that hurt its mission effectiveness when the Air Force tested it for a month in the New Mexico desert, according to a new report from the Pentagon's top weapons tester. ... "Frequent part and system failures, limited supply support, and high false alarm rates in the built-in diagnostic systems caused frequent flight delays and an excessive maintenance workload," the report says.

V-22 Flaws Called 'Lethal'. Hoping to re-energize congressional opposition to the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, critics of the controversial tilt-rotor aircraft released a study Thursday warning that the aircraft is plagued by inherent design flaws and will endanger U.S. lives when it goes into combat this year.

V-22 Engine Fire Caused Major Damage. Officials have determined that an engine fire in a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey probably caused more than $1 million in damage, putting the incident in the most serious category of mishaps.

November V-22 Incident Under Review. As the investigation into the V-22 Osprey program's recent mishap on the ground in North Carolina continues, officials are reviewing an unexplained, previously unpublicized incident in November 2005 that also involved an uncommanded engine acceleration, according to Osprey program manager Marine Corps Col. Bill Taylor.

In spite of everything...
Defense OKs plans to buy 202 V-22s. The Defense Department approved Navy and Air Force plans to buy as many as 36 Bell Helicopter-Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft each year through 2013, according to internal budget documents. ... The overall V-22 program is to cost $50 billion over its anticipated 20-year life.

coachman....yer just trying to spool me up to start the week out huh?

Who Me? Just thought it was an interesting article.

quote:

yer just trying to spool me up to start the week out huh?

A friend of mine (when we were both Cpl's) had this knack for saying just the right thing to spin our Gunny up. He'd do it at least once a week. He'd say "it" (whatever phrase he just knew would set him off that week), turn around, grin at me, and spin his finger in a circle as he walked away leaving a spinning (usually pissed off) Gunny in his wake.

What an amazing and utterly useless talent.

Ehr, Coachman? You weren't ever in the Marines, were you?

Me? Nope 21 yrs in the army, and BTW I did n ot intend to spin the gunny up, I just found the article an interesting read. So gunny I am sorry if you got spun LOL

Gawd, the libtards have gotta be kicking there selves after hearing these reports.

http://www.military.com/news/a...h-new-firepower.html I guess this post is still on V-22