The US military has lifted the grounding guidance for the
military’s V-22 Osprey fleet, roughly three months after the entire fleet was
grounded following a deadly Air Force Special Operations crash off the coast of
Japan. The Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy are expected to begin flying their
V-22 variants in a phased approach over the next several weeks.
The military-wide grounding of V-22 aircraft in December
came a week after eight airmen were killed when their CV-22 crashed off the
coast of Yakushima Island, Japan — as well as a number of other deadly crashes
over the last few years. Military officials said in a series of briefings on
Wednesday that they had confidence in returning the Ospreys to the air after an
Air Force investigation identified the “materiel failure” responsible for the
crash.
“There is nothing more important to me than safety of our
air commandos and the joint force in which we support. … I have high confidence
that the protocols we’re putting in place will avoid a catastrophic event like
this happening again in the future,” Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, commander of
Air Force Special Operations Command, told reporters. “But I never say things
with a finality, because there is an inherent risk of what we do in military
operations.”
Bauernfeind said the Accent Investigation Board — which
investigates all of the facts and circumstances around an accident and produces
a publicly releasable report outlining the details — is still ongoing.
Col. Brian Taylor, the program manager of the Naval Air
Systems Command V-22 joint program office, told reporters Wednesday that while
NAVAIR was rescinding its grounding guidance for the V-22 and implementing
various maintenance and procedural changes to mitigate any further issues, it
was up to each service to determine how that guidance will be implemented for
their units.
The grounding “has hurt the services,” Taylor said, but
added there was “not any sort of demand from the services to get the aircraft
back into play.”
In a series of briefings to reporters on Wednesday,
officials expressed confidence that the Osprey would be safe to fly in but
provided few specifics as to what failed in the deadly November CV-22 crash.
Each of the service representatives who briefed reporters explained that their
service would be taking a phased approach to getting their V-22 variants up and
running again, focusing on getting pilots and crews back to the level of
proficiency they had before the grounding.
Taylor told reporters the November crash was due to an
“unprecedented” component failure — “the first time that we’ve seen this
particular component fail in this way,” he said — though he declined to say
which component it was, or how it failed. He also said the investigation of
“the why” is still ongoing.
It was unclear what, if any, operation limitations NAVAIR
was imposing on the military’s fleet of V-22s — for example, limitations on the
speed or duration at which they can be flown. Asked about potential
limitations, Taylor declined to discuss it due to operational security
concerns.
Taylor also declined to provide specifics on what “maintenance
and procedural changes” were being implemented to address the component
failure, but did say the maintenance checks were not new checks necessarily,
but ones that already existed which would be conducted more frequently.
Ultimately, Taylor said the changes were the result of data
from hundreds of thousands of flight hours combined with what they have since
learned about what went wrong.
“We’ve got terabytes, literally, of data from 750,000 flight
hours,” Taylor said. “And so with that, and what we’ve learned from the mishap,
all of that together really is what has built the picture of how these
mitigation steps are going to provide some more security for us moving
forward.”
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the Assistant Deputy
Commandant for Aviation, said that the Corps’ MV-22s were returning to flight
with “absolute confidence in the analysis by NAVAIR as the airworthiness
certification authority” for the V-22 program.
For Marine MV-22 units, Joyce told reporters that the
aircraft was returning to flight in a “deliberate, methodical” and phased
approach. The first phase will include the Corps’ “most experienced pilots and
aircrew” conducting maintenance check flights, he said. The Corps will then
move to having more junior pilots fly alongside instructor pilots, and finally
into “mission-specific training.”
In total, Joyce said it would take roughly 30 days for an
MV-22 squadron to get back up to speed with the basics, and it would not be
until the late spring or summer until the Marine Corps was back at the
readiness levels prior to the Osprey grounding.
Navy Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air
Forces, also told reporters Wednesday that the Navy CMV-22s returning to flight
would be a “crawl, walk, run incremental approach.” There will first be
enhanced maintenance checks, Cheever said, followed by functional flight checks
done by the Navy’s most experienced pilots.
“Return to flight is not the same as return to mission,”
Cheever said, explaining that it will be weeks, if not months, before CMV-22
pilots and crews will be again transporting personnel and equipment to aircraft
carriers. He added that the Navy’s reliance on the C-2A Greyhound aircraft
during the grounding has resulted in “very little operational impact” to the
Navy.
Similar to the other two services, AFSOC’s Bauernfeind said
his command is also implementing a conditions-based, “multi-phased approach” to
returning to mission with the CV-22s which he expects to take roughly 12 weeks.
“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to
fly,” he said.
