TILT-​​CRAFT STILL NOT READY TO FLY

After nearly twenty years of devel­op­ment — and $19 bil­lion — it’s still unclear whether a con­tro­ver­sial, ultra-​​pricey, tilt-​​rotor air­craft “can per­form all the maneu­vers that sev­eral pilots [say] are nec­es­sary in com­bat,” the Ft. Worth Star-​​Telegram reports.
For an eter­nity, it seems, the Pentagon has been push­ing the V-​​22 Osprey as “twice as fast, three times the pay­load capac­ity, and six times the range” of tra­di­tional heli­copters. But the advan­tages of this “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” machine have been greatly exag­ger­ated, crit­ics say. (The Pentagon dis­putes this, of course.) “The V-​​22 might have only one sig­nif­i­cant per­for­mance advan­tage over heli­copters: speed,” accord­ing to the paper. “Important mechan­i­cal com­po­nents con­tinue to fail, rein­forc­ing long-​​standing con­cerns about reli­a­bil­ity and main­te­nance costs.“
During recent tests, pilots weren’t allowed to take the V-​​22 on “extreme maneu­vers” like sharp banks and U-​​turns. Why? Because “pro­gram offi­cials feared the maneu­vers would dam­age the air­craft,” accord­ing to the Star-​​Telegram.
Back in April 2000, a V-​​22 crashed in Marana, Ariz., killing 19 Marines. It’s one of sev­eral major mishaps that’ve hap­pened dur­ing the Osprey’s two decades of test­ing.

Some vet­eran pilots and avi­a­tion sci­en­tists said the acci­dent exposed an inabil­ity in the V-​​22 to descend rapidly and abruptly change direc­tions, key require­ments for com­bat air­craft. Aerodynamic experts advis­ing Christie and his pre­de­ces­sor, Philip Coyle, argued for addi­tional tests. The Government Accountability Office, a gov­ern­ment watch­dog agency, called for “real­is­tic” tests.
Some test­ing was done. But a series involv­ing spe­cific, sharp defen­sive maneu­vers was skipped after Bell engi­neers warned that it would severely dam­age the rotors, accord­ing to a source within the test­ing pro­gram who asked not to be iden­ti­fied for fear of los­ing his job. 

September 29th, 2004 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.