Getting Wronger All the Time
I used to be of the opinion that tilt-rotor aircraft would be in the Marine Corps future, but that the V-22 Osprey wasn’t the right plane-chopper-thing. Too expensive, too unreliable — another case of young technology being pushed too far. Here’s more evidence I got that one wrong:
The MV-22s proved easier to maintain than the CH-46 aircraft they are replacing. The MV-22s needed 9.5 man hours of maintenance for each hour in the air, versus 24 hours of maintenance for each hour the CH-46s fly. These helicopters are all over twenty years old, which adds a few hours to their maintenance requirements. While the MV-22 required less maintenance than expected, the dust and sand in Iraq led to some engines being replaced earlier than expected.
Those complicated tilt-rotors require less maintenance time than the helicopters they’re replacing? That’s one hell of a plane-chopper-thing.
OT -There’s a nice helicopter stunt in the movie “28 Days Later” involving zombies.
Boy with all those massive up front start up costs it’s good to know that they got a few things right for all that effort. I guess the Killer Bees (Bell and Boeing) still have some game.
I’d wager the next generation will pay very real dividends. We may see an honest to goodness commercial model. Now THAT’S a ride that might get me back into an airport.
It’s not really all that surprising that the Osprey is less maintenance-intensive than the CH-46, is it? I mean, all the existing CH-46 airframes are closing in on 40 years old, and the design itself is closer to fifty. I’d hope we’ve learned something about how to build more reliable aircraft since 1961.
I bet it has something to do with the reason why almost everything is quicker to fix and maintain these days: you can’t diagnose a damn thing anymore, so you just replace stuff. Something needs adjusting? Put this fix kit in there, throw out the old one, and get it flying.
More expensive, more wasteful, but quicker.
But for military items, I have far fewer problems with that than I do when my computer, television, stereo, watch, or whatever goes a bit fritzy and I get funny looks if I would rather get it fixed than replaced.
Jon, I think you will see replacing rather than “fixing” in many industries, especially with respect to computer hardware. Relatively speaking, it’s far less expensive in people time to simply replace a component and diagnose later rather that try to fix it onsite.
It is nice to be wrong when being wrong means things are good
Jon and David-
It’s more than just replacing boxes.
What you’ve seen in your automobile and home electronics is also true in aircraft… stuff is designed better, fails less often, lasts longer.
Now let’s talk about my hopes for spinoffs.
There may be real life-enhancing civilian applications for this technology. Proving this concept will pave the way for the BA609.
I fly a helicopter ambulance. A flight in my BK117 that takes an hour could be accomplished in 20 minutes in the BA609. Think of the impact this would have on “The Golden Hour”.
At age 61, unfortunately, I probably won’t get to fly the thing. But when if and when I have “the big one” I certainly might benefit from it.
Now let’s tweak the V-22…
Improve both it’s airplane and helicopter capabilities…
Give it the ability to autorotate!
What a machine.
wolfwalker is close, but just short. It’s not the design age of the aircraft, it’s the age of the actual airframes.
Any aircraft twenty years old is going to take more maintenance than a brand new aircraft.
Despite that, the MV-22 is still a bloody complex craft; I’ve read a fair number of skeptical comments from Marines about that beastie. If nothing else, what happens if one or both engines die in straight-flight mode? How hard would it be to switch to horizontal mode with the power off? At least choppers can auto-rotate.
Special Forces seem to like it, so quite possibly they know something we don’t.
Steve D,
I, like everyone else on earth, really, really, really hates flying in the post Sept 11th (not that it was enjoyable beforehand either). I live in SF, so I have my Clear Card and direct flights to NY on Virgin US. I get to the airport a half-hour before take off, spend about 3 minutes in security not having to worry about stripping down to my underoos and I’m on my way to NY without hassle and it is actually kind of, um, nice.
Casey, I was initially skeptical of the MV-22 for the same reasons that you mentioned. Several people have written about how they were incredibly worried that there could be a major disaster with one of these just based on the complexity of its design and all the possibilities of things going wrong with it. But, the damn thing is getting some really tough battlefield testing right now and it has been a wonderful surprise.
In 1986 I was the power plants officer for Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 13 in El Toro. I got a visit one day from the Osprey reps who were touring my shop. They had learned that we were rebuilding the T-56 engines, which were somewhat similar to the Osprey’s engine. They told me they expected the Osprey to be active in the fleet within one or two years.
So, the Osprey is not a new aircraft at all. It’s been on hold for more than 20 years.
It seems to me that the more the military tries to “improve” procurement by creating procurement specialists, the worse our procurement gets. Aircraft used to take only a few years from concept to shooting down the enemy or operating from carrier decks. Now, it takes three decades. With the paucity of awarded contracts, all the defense manufacturers are merging to stay in business, eventually the defense industrial complex will be one big über company.
The V-22 is and was a great idea. Cheny and Bush and Rumsfeld and Bush have done a lot to destroy naval aviation by killing and trying to kill one program after another.
There was never any serious doubt in my mind that the Osprey would be a great aircraft. Instead, we Marines and our nation’s readiness have had to put up with ancient CH-46′s that have seriously hindered our capability to project our forces.
Now we’re at war and it’s still taken an additional six years of war to get this thing its first toe dipped into action. Sheesh.
Once you have the platform, and you have the people who are used to it, then dealing with it becomes a lesser problem. They will find the bugs, and the usual US military thing will (surprisingly to a lot of people) send that info back up the line. The next generation of tilt-rotors will make the Osprey look like a Sopwith Camel compared to a North American Mustang.
Casey has something there about the complexity of the design. A helicopter is a rotary-wing aircraft. The blades provide the lift. A C-130, the fixed wings provide the lift. For an Osprey it moves from the props providing the airspeed for the wings to provide the lift to the props providing the lift.
That is a hell of a change in physics while you are still airborne. Yes it took a lot to get the first one available for use, but those expensive, basic steps are now known. The next generation will build on that.
IIRC, the program that produced the B-29 cost more than the a-bomb. It pushed what was known about aircraft so far that it cost billions of 1940′s dollars to make the first aircraft.
And, IIRC, the B-29 program began in the 1930′s. It took Boeing, even with the WWII rush, about eight years to go from design to first flight.
We are not dealing with P-40 Warhawks anymore. We are pushing hard at the envelopes of flight.
“Cheny and Bush and Rumsfeld and Bush have done a lot to destroy naval aviation by killing and trying to kill one program after another.”
You want Cold War procurement, look elsewhere. I knew we were in for better days when Rumsfeld killed that behemoth artillery system, the Crusader. It wouldn’t be worth jack-#$%& right now.
The Osprey has overcome it’s initial problems, thank goodness. It is quite a useful thing to have around…