V-22 Flaws Called 'Lethal'
Fort Worth Star-Telegram | January 20, 2007

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.

The study, commissioned by the Center for Defense Information, a
Washington think tank, calls for Congress to scrap the V-22 and replace
it with a lower-costing helicopter capable of performing similar
missions, although it would be slower.

Co-manufactured by Bell Helicopter Textron of Fort Worth and Boeing
Helicopters of Ridley Park, Pa., the Osprey was near cancellation early
in the decade after four crashes killed 30. Two crashes occurred in 2000,
resulting in 23 deaths.

Learn more about the V-22 Osprey
The program has rebounded after a redesign and more than 19,000 hours of
flight tests.

It now has strong support in Congress as Marines move toward sending the
first V-22 squadrons into combat -- possibly Iraq or Afghanistan -- by
the summer.

But the center's study, "V-22: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker?" warns that
the hybrid aircraft still has "operational, aerodynamic and survivability
challenges that will prove insurmountable, and lethal, in combat."

"We're trying to alert the system that the problems haven't gone away,"
said Winslow Wheeler, director of the center's Straus Military Reform
Project, which monitors military and national-security issues.

The report prompted a scathing rebuttal from the V-22 manufacturing team
and its defenders in the military, who contended that the study rehashed
problems that have been corrected.

"It really baffles us as to why this organization would come out with an
anti-V-22 diatribe when clearly the aircraft is performing well," Bell-
Boeing spokesman Bob Leder said. "Apparently, they just used a lot of
out-of-date information -- or disinformation."

Among other points, the study says the V-22 remains susceptible to a
dangerous aerodynamic phenomenon known as a vortex ring state, which
occurs when a rotor becomes enmeshed in its own downwash and loses lift.

V-22 pilots, under pressure to avoid enemy gunfire, run the risk of
triggering a vortex ring by descending too fast under combat conditions,
said Lee Gaillard, a Philadelphia science and military writer who
authored the report. Rapid descent vertically or at low forward air speed
"creates conditions ripe for VRS," the report said.

"If the Osprey goes into combat, it may cause its own casualties,"
Gaillard said in outlining the report at a Center for Defense Information
briefing.

A vortex ring state was blamed for one of the crashes in 2000.

But James Darcy of the Navy's V-22 Joint Program Office said testing and
review have proven that the V-22 is far less vulnerable to vortex rings
than traditional helicopters and can easily speed through the turbulent
air by tilting the engines forward.

The Marine Corps plans to buy 360 MV-22s to replace aging helicopters to
speed troops and supplies into combat.

The Air Force plans to buy 50 CV-22s for special operations, and the Navy
plans to buy 48 Ospreys for rescue operations.