Hmm, something's fishy. Why is it that the Marines cannot say with accuracy how many V-22's they have? Why are they evasive on this? Why did Lt. Gen. Trautman say in his prepared statement that the Marines have only taken delivery of 91 V-22's? A full year ago he was at a ceremony for the delivery of the 100th V-22. Say what?
We're not talking about thousands of Hueys distributed around the world. We're talking about a 114 or so aircraft, all of which right now are in the U.S.! (Although to be fair, some of them are on the USS Bataan and so are not physically on U.S. soil.)
Okay, very simply: How many V-22's do the Marines have? How many of them are still flyable?
This part is really disturbing. On one random day, the Marines reported on the readiness of their V-22 fleet.
"Of the 47 combat deployable, only 22 were mission capable on June 3, 2009."
So...the Marines have taken delivery of around 114 Ospreys. Yet only 47 are "combat deployable." And of them, only 22 were actually mission capable. (And just what exactly is "combat deployable" anyway? What do they have to do to an Osprey to make it ready for combat?)
Something is going on that we're not being told.
Okay, here comes the opinion part...
My suspicion is that it's the actual aircraft structure itself - all that weight out on the end of those wings. I'll bet that it's causing unrepairable problems with the spar as it interacts with that composite fuselage. I believe that the Marines have found a serious structural weakness and that the V-22's are not lasting nearly as long as anticipated. My suspicion is that there are big structural problems with the V-22 that are being covered up because, perhaps, they know that if this information becomes public it will kill the program.
But think about it: 47 airworthy aircraft out of 114 delivered. Less than half. And NONE of them have been shot down. What are we missing here?