Bell and Boeing have laid in a stock of supplies and spare parts, investing upwards of $100-million in the effort to support the current deployment of USMC MV-22 Ospreys to Al Asad in Iraq, rotorhub learned.
A Navair spokesman, James Darcy confirmed that the effort was undertaken so ‘OEM-level’ parts - parts normally supplied by the manufacturer - would be to topped up in time.
‘Otherwise you could have delays over small items which would have defeated the purpose,’ he said.
The parts and provisioning is centered on a Bell facility in Roanoke, Tx., sources said. The site is where the Osprey manufacturers perform major work - say on items such as proprotor blades sent there for work.
‘The parts involved are vendor items,’ Darcy said. ‘It is good business sense to have them available in advance.’
$100 million is chump change in this program. Actually, this is smart on a number of levels, being the first deployment it will actually assist the industry quite a bit down the line in preparing the logistical train as the platform becomes more readily utilized and deployed. Also, perception is reality, and the industry needs the MV-22 to look good even more than the Marine Corp does. However, when it comes to high profile deployments that are busy trying to keep a low profile...
USMC officials are not commenting on aspects of the deployment, and are understood to have issued an ‘aggressive opsec (operational security)’ set of orders prohibiting any kind of discussion or disclosure connected with the mission.
A Marine Corps spokesman (rank of first lieutenant) is reportedly accompanying the aircraft and ‘stands ready to issue bulletins when appropriate,’ a source said.
But insistence by the Corps on secrecy may have come too late.
Oh its now a secret? Someone forgot to tell the Marine Corp Times.
The world’s first operational tiltrotor aircraft is scheduled to make its first combat tour through Iraq this September when Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, with 10 Ospreys and 171 personnel, deploys to Al Asad Air Base, said Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James T. Conway at the Pentagon April 13.
Many units here will be supported by the aircraft while in country when I Marine Expeditionary Force deploys just months later.
Your OPSEC is a joke if you are telling people in your own newspaper where you intend to deploy the aircraft. Either way, the USS Wasp (LHD 1) crossed the Suez earlier this week, so the missions start soon. It appears the MV-22s are needed badly, or rather the CV-22s, because the word from Iraq is that SOF are at such a high op tempo the US Air Force is reportedly running out of MH-53s.
A shortage of special operations helicopters may lead the Air Force to rush its version of the Texas-built and long-delayed V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft into combat ahead of schedule, the service's top general says.
The V-22 has caused a lot of controversy because of its high cost and two crashes that killed 23 Marines, but the aircraft has been re-engineered and retested.
"We are looking at options to deploy the CV-22s early," Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in a speech this week to a meeting of the Air Force Association. He offered no timetable, but under existing plans, the Air Force's Ospreys would be available for combat only in early 2009.
...
Under existing plans, the Air Force version of the Osprey, the CV-22, is to enter service in early 2009, a stage called Initial Operational Capability. But Gen. Moseley said the Air Force might deploy the CV-22 "pre-Initial Operational Capability" because it is running out of MH-53 Pave Low helicopters used for special operations missions.
After the nonfatal crash of an Air Force MH-53 Pave Low helicopter at Hurlburt Field, Fla., on Sept. 7, the Air Force only has 21 of the special operations choppers left, Gen. Moseley said. Using the Osprey would be one way to "prevent a mission-impacting loss of vertical lift and covert insertion capability" for special operations forces, he said.
The Air Force has received 10 of the 50 Ospreys it plans to buy. Four are used to train pilots, and two are to be retired from flying and used to train maintenance personnel, Bell-Boeing spokesman Bob Leder said. Two more are used for flight testing, leaving only three available for operational missions.
Gen. Moseley said that "delays in appropriation, production and delivery" were one reason the service might put the CV-22s it has into combat early, rather than wait until enough have been delivered to fill out a squadron.
The Bell-Boeing program manager, Robert Kenney, told reporters during the Air Force Association meeting that the companies delivered the last CV-22 early and should deliver the next one before its due date in January. But the companies are only building an average of two CV-22s per year, he said.
I'd love to see Spook or some of the other AF guys take on this report. What is it with the USAF and tilt rotor programs lately?
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