From our friends at Aviation Week (also covering the Sea-Air-Space conference):
The lack of a viable long-term sustainment solution for the V-22’s Rolls-Royce engines may drive the U.S. Marine Corps to look for entirely new engines in a few years.
“We need to move on, with or without Rolls-Royce,” Marine Corps Col. Matt Mulhern, V-22 program manager, told reporters at the Naval Sea-Air-Space Expo Tuesday.
Over the next two years, the Marine Corps will work on developing a new strategy to solve issues that have arisen with V-22 engine maintenance in Iraq. “We’re casting a wide net to see what’s available. [The solution] could be status quo all the way up to needing to find a new motor,” Mulhern said.
When Rolls-Royce proposed a maintenance strategy back in 1998, it was a “power-by-the-hour” solution, Mulhern said, which has turned out to be insufficient.
“That business case analysis predicted the engine components would last so many thousands of hours,” he said. “I’m not sure the government ever agreed with Rolls-Royce, but we thought it was a good business case. Now, as we actually operate the aircraft, the engines aren’t lasting as long as we [or the government] would like.”
Rolls-Royce cannot support the current strategy, Mulhern said. They are unable to recoup the cost of engine maintenance under the power-by-the-hour plan. “We’ll have to move to more traditional engine support,” he said.
The engines are not lasting long in service because of erosion in the compressor blades, which reduces engine efficiency and forces the engine to run at higher temperatures to reach the same power. Another concern is that the existing engine does not have enough margin to handle expected weight growth.
The only turbine engine available in the same power class as the AE 3007 is the General Electric GE38-1B, selected last year as the powerplant for the Sikorsky CH-53K helicopter. Mulhern says that the Navy has not reached the point of estimating the cost of a re-engining program.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Re-engine it? They’ve only operationally deployed it once! The USMC definitely should have bought the optional 3-year, 36,000 mile warranty…
It sounds like the USMC bought a service contract from RR that said RR will maintain the engines for a fixed rate per operating hr. This seems consistent with the statement “Rolls-Royce cannot support the current strategy, Mulhern said. They are unable to recoup the cost of engine maintenance under the power-by-the-hour plan”
So either RR is trying to back-out of the contract(how can they do this w/o serious repercussions) or the contract was written such that they could (big mistake by USMC).
Which is it?
“Power By the Hour”? Poor RR, can’t make any money because it built an engine that does not last.
Haven’t they learned anything from the American Aviation people?
Make garbage; make the Government pay billions to fix it, and then make billions to support it!
They just need to buy a couple Congressman, Col. Matt Mulhern and go on and on about “job creation”
Or am I being overly cynical?
Or am I being overly cyncal?
Funny thing; peace-time estimates for service life never seem to match what really happens in war-time service. Especially when they are based on East Coast conditions (or Britain & EU) instead of the nasty, windy, no-moisture or rain-soaked blow sand conditions of the American SW (or Iraq, Afghanistan, N. Africa, ect). Disappointed? Some. Surprised? No. Do you remember why it’s called the “sandbox”?
Don’t forget that unexpected things happened to most all engines and drive trains once they got used, abused by those young GI’s in the conditions encountered. Expected by the pessimists, ignored by wishful thinkers.
So is there any chance the General Electric GE38-1B to be installed on V-22?
RR could have easily accounted for various operating conditions and mission types by placing in the contract accelerating factors that for example count 1 hr. in the desert as 2 equiv. hrs. in nominal conditions.
This does not make sense. Something more fundamental was missed here, or the engine is being operated more severly due to other system shortfalls. I can’t imagine RR missed something in validation testing considering the $$$ that was spent.
Hi,
Off course Allison is not that sturdy engine…
It is family legacy, those who fly Bell helicopters powered by Allison engines knows how easy it is to to do a hot start and burn the combustion chamber. How they do not like altitude or hot and high conditions..more…
Allison, now Rolls Royce are not capable to make a FADEC for any of their production, when every other engine manufacturers are proposing FADEC version sof their turboshafts..
I hope the new baby RR300 will be a good piece to power the R-66, Schweizer 330 and 434, and enstrom 480..
We’ll see