{"id":185091,"date":"2011-10-15T05:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-15T10:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/10\/15\/heres-a-surprise\/"},"modified":"2011-10-15T05:09:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-15T10:09:00","slug":"heres-a-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/10\/15\/heres-a-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s a Surprise\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the US Marines are manufacturing statistics to falsely represent the safety of the V-22 Osprey<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an aircraft with a reputation for falling from the sky. But on at least one occasion, the U.S. military\u2019s controversial V-22 Osprey tiltrotor \u2014 a hybrid transport that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like an airplane, thanks to its rotating engine nacelles \u2014 did just the opposite. It flew upward, out of control of its pilots.<\/p>\n

On March 27, 2006, at a Marine Corps air base in New River, North Carolina, an MV-22 assigned to Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron 204 experienced an unplanned surge in engine power as the three-man crew was preparing for a flight. \u201cThat caused the aircraft to inadvertently lift off the deck approximately 30 feet,\u201d Marine spokesman Maj. Shawn Haney explained. \u201cIt came back down \u2026 there was major damage sustained to the right wing and the right engine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Yet the Marines and the Naval Safety Center ultimately decided that the Osprey\u2019s dangerous joyride didn\u2019t count as a serious flying accident, known in Pentagon parlance as a \u201cClass A flight mishap.\u201d The reason, said Capt. Brian Block, a Marine spokesman: The aircraft wasn\u2019t supposed to take off just then; therefore, it\u2019s not a flight problem. If a V-22 suffers damage while preparing to launch or after landing, or if the crew does not explicitly command the aircraft to take off but it does anyways, then the accident doesn\u2019t count as a flight accident.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo intent for flight existed,\u201d he told Danger Room. \u201cAs such, it is not included in calculating the Class A flight mishap rate.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only seemingly serious accident that the Marines neglected to include in its tally of flight mishaps for the Osprey. A review of press reports, analysts\u2019 studies and military records turns up 10 or more potentially serious mishaps in the last decade of V-22 testing and operations. At least three \u2014 and quite possibly more \u2014 could be considered Class A flight mishaps, if not for pending investigations, the \u201cintent for flight\u201d loophole and possible under-reporting of repair costs.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The Marines boast that the Osprey is the \u201csafest tactical rotorcraft within the U.S. Marine Corps\u201d over the last decade, in the words of Lt. Col. Jason Holden, the V-22 plans officer at Marine Corps headquarters in Virginia. By the official reckoning of the Marine Corps and the Naval Safety Center, the V-22 has a Class A flight mishap rate of 1.28 per 100,000 flight hours over the last 10 years, compared to a Class A flight mishap rate of 2.6 per 100,000 flight hours for all Marine aircraft over the same period.<\/p>\n

But the Marines have given all sorts of reasons not to trust that official rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Marines are so vested in the success of the V-22, that they cannot be trusted to manage the program.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Marine Corps feels compelled to go to these lengths is an indication that the Osprey is not performing as promised<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the US Marines are manufacturing statistics to falsely represent the safety of the V-22 Osprey: It\u2019s an aircraft with a reputation for falling from the sky. But on at least one occasion, the U.S. military\u2019s controversial V-22 Osprey tiltrotor \u2014 a hybrid transport that takes off like a helicopter and cruises …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,970,1008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-corruption","category-defense-procurement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}