V-22 Osprey，revolutionary or mediocre？, page 1

reply to post by paraphi

The service record of this aircraft differs from other rotary and fixed wing designs... how?

We lose more troops to accidents in the supply lines supporting front-line troops than we lose of the front-line troops.

From when I was about ten years old, until about fifteen, I couldn't turn on the news without hearing about some Black Hawk or Chinook going down in some place the map forsook.

Just by giving the order to deploy people - a certain percentage of them are, statistically, going to die. Most of it due to maintenance oversights, accidents, and failure to apply ORM (Operational Risk Management).

The V-22 deserves very little of the bad press it gets. Statistically, it is a safer airframe than just about anything else in service and a better survivability rate (though that could be like saying a fuel truck is more statistically survivable than an M-1 tank - you don't generally expose a fuel truck to the same things you do a tank). The accidents it is going to have by the raw nature of probability are then inflated because it is a 'revolutionary' design. People wonder about how safe and effective it is - since we don't have videos of it flying in, kicking ass, and taking names - we get to have our fill of drama off of the accident reports.

We never really get out of highschool. We all crave drama, and that's all the claims against the V-22 amount to when you stack it up side-by-side with any other machine out there. At the end of the day - it's about ten times more reliable than your car even when it's sucking in sand for three months and over a hundred flight hours past component tolerance ratings.

Developing it has been expensive - I'm not going to defend or attack that point. It merely is what it is. As for whether or not it's been cost-effective... again - it is what it is. Once you're committed to a contract and the need for an airframe to fill a role, you're committed. Stopping at 10 billion dollars as opposed to the alleged 30 billion would have netted us... what? 10 billion dollars and no V-22 with a hole in the arsenal (you could argue that there's not a hole there, but, it's a role that will no longer be capable of being utilized in any strategic plan).

It's an issue of opinion, in that case. I see the craft and mission as more important than the arbitrary cost. I can hound defense contractors for their handling of their responsibility that drives up such arbitrary numbers, but at the end of the day - it's the plane/tank/etc that you want and need. Costs - unexpected or planned, are to be encountered.

I'm not a fan of the way the F-22 was horribly abused. What was worse was deciding to not complete the arsenal. You can't be whimsical about selecting and establishing an arsenal. Once you commit to it - you've got to see it through. Same with things like the V-22. The C-5 was worse - all kinds of stuff, such as $20,000 'special' hammers that "do not damage the aircraft" - that should not have been.