Another US Marines aircraft down

I think there are roughly 160 Ospreys in service. $50M gets you around $310G of upgrades and improvements per aircraft. That doesn't seem a lot to me, especially when it comes to the costing of military equipment. But I may be wrong.
Obviously, these upgrades must have been in the pipeline for a while now, so do you think they may be upgrades for landing and take off ? As this seems to be where most difficulties lie with the V-22.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
They just announced a $50M+ contract modification to Boeing and Bell to improve readiness and upgrade the Osprey fleet. One of the modifications will include improved displays and navigation data.

a reply to: nelloh62

This is just to cover modifying one test aircraft, that will undergo several rounds of upgrades and testing. They're not going to upgrade everything at once, they are going to do step upgrades and test each upgrade before it gets installed on fleet aircraft.

Gotcha, I thought that was cheap ( $50M for the whole fleet ). As we all know, it costs $10G just for a hammer !!

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: nelloh62

This is just to cover modifying one test aircraft, that will undergo several rounds of upgrades and testing. They're not going to upgrade everything at once, they are going to do step upgrades and test each upgrade before it gets installed on fleet aircraft.

They confirmed that the aircraft hit the deck of the USS Green Bay before entering the water. With this accident, the current FY17 accident rate for Marine aviation is at 4.56/100,000 compared to 3.42/100,000 last year at this time.

The Marine Corps leadership just announced a 24 hour stand down for all Marine aircraft. The stand down is at the unit commander discretion, and they have two weeks to carry it out.

www.cnn.com...

Ssshhh just dont tell NK....
Its worrying when you have to suspend operations to catch up on maintenance..Warning signs have been there for a while..Too little too late?

a reply to: Blackfinger

It's not to catch up on maintenance. You won't even come close to catching up on maintenance in 24 hours for anything but basic maintenance. It's to review the bold items checklists, safety briefings, etc.

a reply to: Zaphod58
www.asahi.com...

Apparently Japan's new Defence Minister asked the US not to fly Ospreys in Japan after the crash in Australia. Okinawans were incensed after a US Osprey flew over their Island on 7th August.

a reply to: nelloh62MI

This is another case of poor information getting to the public. The Osprey does not have that bad of a safety record. Other aircraft that people watch fly over their heads and don't even blink at are far, far worse. The CH-53 in two recent crashes killed more people than all the Osprey accidents since 1991 combined. And the -53 has had far more accidents in the same time period.

Japan is getting their first Osprey soon. They're really going to lose it then apparently.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Totally agree. We don't even know why it crashed yet. So it's a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

a reply to: nelloh62

It makes me shake my head and get so frustrated some days. I saw a comment the other day, and the guy was totally serious, that the Osprey is the deadliest aircraft ever built, and has the worst accident rate ever since they started flying. And he sat there arguing with me when I kept proving him wrong.

The C-130, counting Air Force and Marine, all models, from 1991-2017 had something like 30 accidents, with 100+ fatalities. I use 91 because that was the first Osprey accident. In that same time frame, the Osprey had something like 10, with 42 fatalities, and something like 35 of them were from early testing accidents.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Numbers and facts just don't come into consideration when some people have an agenda.

a reply to: Woody510

It doesn't help that a CH-53 accident gets four lines in the news, but a V-22 crash gets headlines like "MV-22 Crash Decades In The Making". People believe the media far more than get believe people with facts on their side.

Spot on there mate

originally posted by: Woody510
a reply to: Zaphod58

Numbers and facts just don't come into consideration when some people have an agenda.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
the Osprey is the deadliest aircraft ever built, and has the worst accident rate ever since they started flying.

I'm pretty sure that honor goes to the F7U Cutlass.

a reply to: JIMC5499

By far. Everything that beats it has had far longer to do it in.

The remains of Captain Benjamin Cross (posthumous promotion), Cpl Nathaniel Ordway, and LCpl Ruben Velasco (posthumous promotion) were recovered from the wreckage of the aircraft. Captain Cross and LCpl Velasco have been transported to Hickam. Cpl Ordway was recovered after them and will be transported there as soon as possible.

taskandpurpose.com...

RIP...

Caught this today but can't see it on here so apologies if it's already somewhere

a reply to: Woody510

It was described as a hard landing. Most likely similar to what happened in Hawaii a couple years ago, and they got into sand being kicked up and either suffered a brownout, or engine problem from the dust.