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NAVAIR releases V-22 Osprey review findings
Naval Air Systems Command released the findings of a comprehensive review (CR) Dec. 12 on the V-22 Osprey aircraft flown by the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. The review reaffirmed the airworthiness of the V-22 platform under established controls allowing the continued safe operations of this critical joint capability.
“In coordination with V-22 service leaders, NAVAIR has developed action plans to mitigate safety deficiencies,” said NAVAIR Commander US Navy Vice Adm. John E. Dougherty, in a new release. “We are continuously evaluating procedural compliance to prevent mishaps as well as strengthening airworthiness controls to establish clear risk thresholds.”
In accordance with recommendations in the comprehensive review, NAVAIR is holding regular progress reviews to improve cross-service coordination and increase stakeholder engagement to ensure corrective actions are executed in an efficient manner.
“Through ongoing analysis and targeted action, we remain committed to improving the V-22’s performance and safeguarding the warfighters who rely on this platform,” said Doughtery.
The objective of this CR is to assess V-22 performance on key safety and readiness dimensions, against standards and best practices, and recommend actions to close gaps by implementing enforceable action plans with estimated completion dates and single accountable owners.
Findings
Safety: This review finds that the V-22 platform has accumulating safety risk due to four main factors: (1) Inadequate timeline for implementation of material and non-material fixes to mitigate identified risks; (2) Non-compliance with established airworthiness and safety of flight procedures; (3) Lack of airworthiness standards for assessing accumulated risks and for the rate at which risks should be retired; and (4) The joint program office faces challenges in swiftly implementing safety remediations across the platform due to differences in service mission sets, priorities, and risk tolerance.
Readiness: This review finds that the V-22 platform has missed readiness targets due to four main factors: (1) The V-22 joint program has not uniformly shared and implemented known aviation maintenance best practices across the services; (2) Joint V-22 program operates suboptimized supply systems and maintenance programs that do not prioritize cross-service readiness outcomes; (3) Persistent reliability issues combined with procedural and experiential differences have resulted in higher Maintenance Man Hours Per Flight Hour; (4) Inventory management challenges, to include delayed deliveries, both over and undersized fleets, manpower to fleet size imbalances, and multiple configurations/sub-fleets.
While the conclusions and recommendations of this review were developed specifically for the V-22 program, the findings will be shared broadly within the military aviation community to convey best practices and lessons learned.
The Department of the Navy and services are actively implementing the review’s 32 distinct recommendations to enhance the safety and readiness of the V-22 platform.
Background
The V-22 Osprey is a multi-mission tiltrotor aircraft that combines fixed-wing speed and range with rotarywing vertical lift capabilities. This unique capability makes it essential to the USMC, USN, and AFSOC for global combat, humanitarian missions, and carrier onboard delivery.
Over the past 4 years, there have been 12 Class A Mishaps that resulted in 4 aircraft destroyed and 20 service members lost. Some of the key class A mishaps for the V-22 platform in the past four years were in Norway (18 March 2022) which resulted in 4 USMC servicemember deaths; Glamis, CA (8 June 2022) which resulted in 5 USMC servicemember deaths, Australia (27 August 2023) which resulted in 3 USMC servicemember deaths, and the GUNDAM-22 mishap in Japan (29 November 2023) which resulted in 8 USAF servicemember deaths.
The aircraft has had multiple partial / full groundings as a result of these high-profile mishaps, including a partial grounding for hard clutch engagement (HCE) from December 2022 to March 2023, full grounding for proprotor gearbox (PRGB) issues after the GUNDAM-22 mishap in Japan from December 2023 to March 2024, and another partial grounding for the PRGB in December 2024 after the Cannon Air Force Base (AFB) mishap. In addition to safety challenges, the V-22 has consistently had low readiness levels, with average 2020-2024 mission capable rates of approximately 50% for USN and AFSOC, and 60% for USMC.
In September 2023, due to continued safety and readiness issues, NAVAIR initiated a comprehensive review of the V-22 program to find the root causes of its issues and give recommendations to address these root causes.
Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps
