On 22 March 2011, Marines returned to the shores of Tripoli. While in support of Operation ODYSSEY DAWN, an F–15E fighter went down over Libya, and both Americans ejected. The rescue that followed was not only a textbook example of what the MV–22B Osprey brings to the fight, but also a testament to the agility, flexibility, and effectiveness of our Navy and Marine Corps expeditionary force. Whether ship- or landbased, the MV–22B has become a key enabler of this team.
The Osprey is a revolutionary machine, and it is giving the MAGTF commander the flexibility he needs to influence the battlespace. The aircraft shrinks the battlefield, flying Marines higher, faster, and farther and providing MAGTF and joint commanders unprecedented options in supporting our ground forces. In the MV–22B Osprey, now on its 11th deployment, the Marine Corps has a truly groundbreaking aircraft that has proven itself in combat to be operationally effective, safe, and survivable in the most difficult conditions, and also cost effective. The Osprey is rewriting the art of the possible and, in concert with other newly fielded and soon to be fielded aircraft, is creating a new spectrum of possibilities of what the Marine Corps can provide the Nation and how it can meet all warfighting requirements.
Effectiveness
The V–22, in both its Marine (MV–22B) and Air Force Special Operations Command (CV–22) versions, has proven in both peace and war to be a tremendously versatile platform. Since its operational debut, the V–22 has conducted a variety of missions proving its multirole capability, to include:
• Combat troop inserts and extracts.
• Long-range battlefield logistics.
• Raids against defended targets.
• Medical and casualty evacuation.
• Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
• Stability and security operations.
• Seabased operations.
• Trans-Atlantic self-deployments.
• Tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel (TRAP).
Brief examples of these missions are outlined below.
First, let me conclude the Libya story. In the middle of the night, less than 2 hours after that F–15E crew ejected over North Africa, two MV–22Bs, along with other elements of the TRAP package—including organic AV–8B Harriers, CH–53E Sea Stallions with a quick reaction force aboard, and a Marine rescue force aboard the Ospreys themselves—were turning up engines onboard the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) approximately 133 nautical miles away from the downed airmen. The Ospreys launched into the darkness and closed the objective at an average speed of more than 260 knots, supported by Marine Corps and Air Force jets overhead the downed pilot. Once in the objective area, one Osprey landed, recovered the downed crewman, and departed . . . all within 90 seconds. Twenty minutes from the time he was running for his life in hostile North Africa, the rescued pilot was safely back on American territory aboard the Kearsarge.
Ground commanders and their Marines have seen what the Osprey can do. They have flown in the back of it, they have run down its ramp into landing zones in combat, and they have run up its ramp into the sanctuary the aircraft provides. Those Marines have one message for Marine aviation: we want more of these. They know that they can move three times as many Marines five times farther and twice as fast as they could move those same Marines on our conventional helicopters. As they transit to the objective, those Marines are flying as high as 13,000 feet, out of the range of the rifles, heavy machineguns, and rocket propelled grenades that are the weapons of the irregular fighter. The aircraft can carry 24 combat loaded Marines out to a combat radius of 325 nautical miles; this compares to the 75-nautical mile radius of a CH–46E at half the available payload.
The aircraft is also amazingly quiet. One Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) rifle battalion commander told us of Ospreys delivering one of his companies onto a raid objective, spiraling down on top of an enemy force, and watching the startled enemy fighters literally drop weapons and scatter because the aircraft were right there, in the zone, before their approach was seen or heard.
In March 2011 the 26th MEU was given the order to redeploy its OEF-based aviation combat element MV–22Bs to the Mediterranean. Using their aerial refueling capability and employing organic Marine KC–130J refuelers, the six Ospreys self-deployed in two waves of three over 3,000 nautical miles, flying from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean to recover aboard USS Kearsarge. Those Ospreys then turned promptly to operations at sea.
The range and speed of the aircraft widen the spectrum of the possible for not only the kinetic fight but also across the range of military operations. For example, when a patient aboard USS Kearsarge required medical support beyond the ship’s capability, officers realized that the nearest site that could provide the required services was a facility on shore 500 nautical miles away. A section of MV–22Bs was tapped to perform the mission because, in the words of the MEU commander, “The V–22 is the only aviation asset that can bridge the long ship-to-shore expanse.” In another instance, Marine Medium Tilt-rotor Squadron 263, deployed aboard USS Bataan (LHD 5) with 22d MEU, flew a casevac mission of 147 nautical miles in 37 minutes. In the words of a ship’s corpsman, “If it hadn’t been for the Osprey, there’s no way we could have gotten the patient to where she needed to be to receive the care that ultimately saved her life.”
The versatility of the platform is again illustrated in another recent example. In the Marine Corps’ humanitarian assistance/disaster relief role following the devastating Haiti earthquake in January 2010, the MV–22B was uniquely suited to reach multiple inland locations in one period of daylight, and again saved lives by carrying much needed relief supplies and medical personnel into the remote countryside.
Safety and Survivability
In February 2011 the V–22 program as a whole—both Marine Corps and Special Operations Command airframes—exceeded 100,000 total flight hours. More importantly, the MV–22B crossed this milestone while maintaining a tremendous safety record: the Osprey had the lowest Class A flight mishap rate of any Marine Corps tactical rotorcraft for the decade between January 2001 and January 2011.
The aircraft’s performance in Iraq from September 2007 to March 2009 provides a telling lesson. Over 18 months of combat operations, the aircraft completed every assigned mission, and it did so flying faster, farther, and safer than its legacy counterparts. Despite being the target of enemy small arms, rocket propelled grenades, and man-portable air defense weapons on multiple occasions, not one of the over 40,000 total passengers was harmed in almost 9,000 hours of flight.
Likewise, in OEF the MV–22B has been targeted and in some cases hit by small arms and rocket propelled grenade fires. In every instance the aircraft has been able to continue flight to safety with no injuries to crew or embarked passengers.
Challenges and Opportunities
The MV–22B achieved its initial operational capability milestone in June 2007. On the heels of this significant event we decided to deploy the MV–22B to war, fully 1 year before its planned material support date. This decision put additional stress on our developing logistics support infrastructure, but with our forces simultaneously committed in two conflicts, we were hard pressed to find good reasons to hold back this revolutionary capability from supporting Marines in combat. Simply put, it was the right thing to do.
Like any newly introduced aircraft, the MV–22B has experienced its share of growing pains. In some cases, engineering predictions of component service life were inaccurate and are now being replaced by actual in-service data. This allows us to better support aircraft availability on the flightline via reliability and supply support enhancements. It is instructive to keep in mind that although the program has been in development since 1981, the V–22 community has flown nearly half of its total flight hours in the last 2 years. Against this backdrop of rapidly increasing flight hours and multiple combat deployments through which the airplane has been flown under the most rigorous environmental extremes, the Osprey is meeting the challenge. Aided by on time and on budget deliveries of aircraft since 2007, we are replacing the legacy CH–46E helicopter at a rate of two squadrons per year and will complete the transition in 2017.
Areas frequently targeted by V–22 critics are procurement and operating costs. While it is true that the Osprey costs more on a per unit basis to buy and operate than a legacy helicopter, the discussion doesn’t end there. Our operating experience with the Osprey has validated the multitude of studies that were undertaken during its development. Flying “twice as fast” and “five times as far” with “three times the payload” are not just snappy talking points. They are direct expressions of value gained from each dollar spent procuring and operating the aircraft. Given current operating costs, on a dollar per passenger mile basis, the Osprey carries its payload cheaper than any legacy rotorcraft currently in our inventory. Beyond the importance of cost and value of an aircraft is the protection of our most valuable assets, the passengers and crew; they are now travelling well above the range of the majority of currently utilized threat weapons and therefore safer than when carried by lower, slower helicopters.
Future Operations and Possibilities
In 1988 then-Commandant Alfred M. Gray insisted that “if I am a MEU commander off of North Carolina, I want every bad guy from New York to Miami to be nervous.” What he meant was that he wanted to be able to move hundreds of miles and then go over or around a defending force—or simply go where it was not. Aided by the capabilities of the MV–22B and its sister ship CV–22, the quantum leap in capability he envisioned is now reality.
Aviation in the Marine Corps exists, in the words of Maj Alfred A. Cunningham, to “assist the troops on the ground to successfully carry out their missions.” Marine Corps expeditionary operations will always center on the MAGTF, and therefore Marine aviation is inherently naval, inherently expeditionary, and inherently supportive to a ground force as part of a combined arms team. Better technology is driving better tactics to provide lethality and battlefield mobility to that warfighter. The Osprey will not be just a cornerstone of tomorrow’s Marine aviation force; it will be the keystone of tomorrow’s MAGTF.
Finally, our Nation faces a difficult fiscal environment. With declining defense budgets looming, a fact-based fresh look at our tactical mobility requirements across the Services may be in order, with an eye toward leveraging existing, proven, and currently fielded assets to fulfill current and predicted operational gaps. We realize that, when taking the long view, we have just begun to scratch the surface of exploiting the capabilities of the MV–22B. Its demonstrated multirole capability may make this aircraft a potential candidate for other Department of Defense and coalition requirements. The Osprey’s unparalleled success in the harsh desert environments of Iraq and Afghanistan, seabased execution of the Libyan TRAP mission, and long-range self-deployment capabilities make this the aircraft best suited to effectively take on the harshest environment of the future—the upcoming fiscal environment.
>Editor’s Note: A version of this article was published in Proceedings (Nov11).
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