With all this bs from Sasless and Dan Reno on this thread I can only assume they are again being beards for another S-92 fiasco. How many 92's have been dropped into the dirt so far since the V-22 deployed? I count four 92's, but that is what has been published. Lets see, one 92 a write off and three that would have been except they were over land. Poor Sasless and Reno have to live with the ignominity of having one 92 crew picked up by a 212 and another one by a truck.

The Sultan

Sults,

Who mentioned 92's?

Last I checked there are no 92's in military service anywhere.

It is a fact the 22 is replacing the 46.

46's carry machine guns...big ones...and have done combat medavac flights since Vietnam days.

22's have at best one small ramp gun.

Has a 22 made a combat insertion, extraction, or medavac to/from a hasty LZ under fire?

Has a 22 ever taken hits from ground fire while operating to remote landing zones in direct support of ground units actively engaged with enemy forces?

Since the 22 arrived in Iraq....have any UH-1N's, CH-46's, or CH-53's taken hostile fire resulting from operations into/out of hasty LZ's doing inserts, extractions, or medavac's?

Perhaps I might ask my Marine neighbor for any non-classified reports that can address those questions....the answers would be very interesting I think.


A few more questions for answering.....

V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame?

Mr Sultan,
What is your reason for responding to the V-22 fiasco and linking the S92 to it? Bored?

The bigger point is that one would hope that when you spend so much time and money on a aircraft that was billed to replace the H-46 that we would all be peeing in our pants now in wonder of it's accomplishments since the Pfrog is legendary in combat. Now comes this 'Johnny come (real) lately' Godsend and we find (no real surprise) that it can't do one thing better than the Phrog.. other than perhaps giving the pilots that 'happy, fuzzy feeling' while accelerating out of a hover. Gee, I feel happy that my tax money bought another Bell failure due to politics and greed.

Go back to sleep Mr. Sultan and stop squeeking.

"Has a 22 made a combat insertion, extraction, or medavac to/from a hasty LZ under fire?"

We did qualification on M4 rifles from our aircraft a while back. We hit more targets than several other units which had mounted machine guns. We also did dozens and dozens of hot zone medevacs and had 1 round hit an aircraft, with no injuries. Tactics are the key here. Aside from that, those who do the medevac stuff agree that every extra knot you can get when en route to or from the injured guy counts more than anything else.

Many of our sister units did hot inserts and extractions for the infantry guys, and none of them fired a single covering fire round. War has changed, and while vietnam meant huge amounts of covering fire, the current war means speed and agility getting the guys on the ground, more than having a blast of machine gun when you're rolling in. If you need the heavy cover, mount up the miniguns and bring some guns with you, but if it's the typical assault they're doing these days, the ability to jump 60 miles in 20 minutes instead of 30 is way more influential than a few rounds leaping from the heli on the way in.

-Mike

Mike,
Let's hope future wars requiring vertical work fit as nicely into the V-22's parameters for waging war as does this one. It would also be nice for grunts to be able to shoot their M-4s out the window 'just in case' but that is also not possible. Anyways, here's some day-old propaganda on the V-22:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/osprey-in-iraq.html

Osprey in Iraq: The Report Card
By David Hambling July 31, 2008 | 7:19:00 AMCategories: Copters, Planes, Copters, Blimps
Presidential candidate Barack Obama's flight on a V-22 Osprey marks a new high point for the tilt-rotor's publicity machine -- and a further indication of its transformation from assault transport to prestige VIP taxi. But photo-ops aside, how does the report card look for the first deployment of this much-hyped machine?
Availability rate: Could do better. Back in January we mentioned that after a bad start with rates of just 50%, stockpiling of spare parts had brought availability up to a "more comfortable" 80%.
According to Flight International, things have slipped a little. "On its initial seven-month deployment, [the Osprey unit] recorded a mission availability rate of around 70% and a monthly flying rate per aircraft of around 65 [hours]." You might have expected that a showpiece deployment of just ten aircraft -- one with high priority for spares and personnel -- could do a bit better than that.
Engines: More work needed. While modifications mean that the Ospreys in Iraq have not suffered from the spate of engine fires affecting tiltrotors in the US, news leaked out recently that an Osprey in Iraq made a forced landing. "A boroscope inspection of the combustion chamber showed that the liner had broken into pieces. These pieces entered into the gas generator, causing significant damage," theofficial statement said.

"The engine was breaking up. Not a good thing. But what’s more interesting is the indication that the troubled engine was still putting out considerable thrust, but the aircraft couldn’t maintain altitude," Bob Cox notes at Sky Talk. " The V-22 is supposed to be able to fly at least some distance and land on just one engine, but in this case it was unable to hold altitude while still getting significant power from the damaged engine.
We're still waiting for clarification on just how well the Osprey can fly on a single engine. Meanwhile, it turns out that then engines are wearing out much faster than expected, both in Iraq and in the US.
Armament: Improving reluctantly. For a long time, the Navy vigorously defended their decision against a huge amount of criticism for the Osprey to be fielded without weapons. Then, in March, the service reversed their view and decided that a 7.62 minigun will be installed after all -– but not until the third deployment to Iraq. The weapon will take up about 800 pounds of cargo space and will require some seats to be removed.
Business Acumen: Excellent! A ten billion dollar contact for 167 Ospreys was agreed in March. The transport of future Presidents and glamor models is assured.
(Photo: US Air Force)
ALSO:
· Osprey's 'Excellent Photo Op'
· Osprey Fire Injures Marine
· Osprey In Iraq Flies VIPs... When it's Ready to Fly
· Osprey's Weapons Not Ready to Shoot?
· Time Vs. Osprey (Updated)
· Osprey Bursts into Flames; "Significant Damage"

From an Osprey Developmental Insider
 

Why the V-22 is Still Unsafe

Carlton Meyer's essay is devastating. Question: how did the V-22 get past operational testing? I just don't get it.
I have been deeply skeptical of the V-22 for years. Meyer's article lists a variety of reports issued along the way that clearly should have given pause. It does not meet Navy crashworthy standards, but somehow went into production anyway.

This essay is superb. Here’s the best part:

The V-22 cash machine is spread among 43 states and 4 foreign countries as a jobs program to ensure solid political support. Some may wonder how such a racket survives public scrutiny. Stephen McClellan's book about the financial industry "Full of Bull" provides an overview of executive traits. He writes about the "good ole boy" style used by those hiding corporate failures, like the Bell-Boeing V-22 program, which often uses senior Marine Corps officers as their "good ole boy" spokesmen. They sweet talk reporters and government investigators, buy them lunch at the club, and take them for a ride in a V-22.

V-22 Osprey
 

What really interests me about this thread is the extreme attitudes and perspectives that it appears to engender in the replies.

Can I assume that all the replies are based on objective reasoning and supported by fact? Some are so extreme that I am suspecting a possible commercial bias.

I do of course realise that this is a rumour network!

Tigerfish

Special Operations CV-22's First Deployment
 

CV-22 Ospreys Complete Deployment In Mali

Thu, 04 Dec '08
Aircraft Supported Exercise Flintlock 2009

The military's fleet of Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft is seeing more light under its wheels. Four CV-22s from the 8th Special Operations Squadron at Florida's Hurlburt Field recently returned after completing their first operational deployment supporting Exercise Flintlock 2009 in November in Bamako, Mali.

The aircraft supported the training exercise in the Trans-Saharan region designed to build relationships and capacity and to enhance African nations' ability to patrol and control their sovereign territory.
The exercise included personnel from 15 countries, and the CV-22 served as a platform for multinational training. Specifically, the aircraft was used to transport Malian and Senegalese special operations forces and their leadership teams.
"We did long range, vertical lift, and dropped (teams) off at a landing zone," said Capt. Dennis Woodlief, an 8th SOS pilot. "They practiced their ground movements, then we brought them back."
Missions like this allowed the CV-22 to take advantage of its unique capabilities as a tilt rotor aircraft, said Lt. Col. Eric Hill, the 8th SOS squadron commander.
"The tyranny of distance in the African continent is amazing," he said. "We were able to go over 500 nautical miles, infiltrate a small team for them to run their exercise, and bring them back all the way to home base without doing an air refueling stop. And we were able to do that in the span of about four hours."
"It would take the MH-53 (Pave Low) twice, sometimes three times as long (to do these missions)," Captain Woodlief said. "And we did it with just one aircraft."
Colonel Hill said the CV-22 is an "unprecedented capability." And with the new capability, there were also new lessons to be learned.

"We learned some lessons like we always do on different equipment we'd like to have and requirements that we'll have in the future," he said.
Many of those lessons revolve around tailoring maintenance packages for future deployments.
Members of the 1st Special Operations Helicopter Maintenance Squadron deployed to Bamako in support of the 8th SOS. Because the exercise was held at a remote location rather than an established base, one of the maintenance challenges was self-deploying with all the parts and equipment they needed to keep the CV-22s operational for the entire exercise, and for the cumulative 10,000 nautical mile trans-Atlantic flights.
"We have a laundry list about three pages long of things we'd like to take next time," said Master Sgt. Craig Kornely, the squadron's lead production supervisor. "As we grow into the machine, we realize our needs for equipment and resources."
But despite the challenges of operating a new aircraft for the first time overseas and in an austere environment, the squadron had a perfect mission success rate during the exercise.

"We had zero maintenance cancels, zero delays, and we executed 100 percent every time," Captain Woodlief said. "I think we went above and beyond everyone's expectations."
FMI: www.af.mil, www.defenselink.mil
Aero-News Network: The Aviation and Aerospace World's Daily/Real-Time News and Information Service

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/wo...html?th&emc=th

Funny they didn't choose Afghanistan or Iraq for their first "operational" deployment.:oh:

I am sure the Special Forces of Mali's military benefited greatly from the deployment at great expense of four V-22's and all the support assets that went with the deployment.:ugh:

According to a NY Times article and other open sources, Al Quada is digging deep into Mali to establish new training bases, and until now the government attitude there has been 'live and let live.' Perhaps these CV-22 'training operations' in Mali last month will become 'joint operations' for taking these bases out in the future.


U.S. Training in Africa Aims to Deter Extremists

Michael Kamber for The New York Times
In an exercise last month near Bamako, Mali, American troops helped soldiers from Mali and Senegal in West Africa learn to guard their borders against infiltration by Islamic militants.
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: December 12, 2008
KATI, Mali — Thousands of miles from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another side of America’s fight against terrorism is unfolding in this remote corner of West Africa. American Green Berets are training African armies to guard their borders and patrol vast desolate expanses against infiltration by Al Qaeda’s militants, so the United States does not have to.
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
An American military officer, at back, photographed Senegalese soldiers training last month near Bamako, Mali, as part of a broad effort to deter extremism.
A recent exercise by the United States military here was part of a wide-ranging plan, developed after the Sept. 11 attacks, to take counterterrorism training and assistance to places outside the Middle East, like the Philippines and Indonesia. In Africa, a five-year, $500 million partnership between the State and Defense Departments includes Algeria, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, and Libya is on the verge of joining.
American efforts to fight terrorism in the region also include nonmilitary programs, like instruction for teachers and job training for young Muslim men who could be singled out by militants’ recruiting campaigns.
One goal of the program is to act quickly in these countries before terrorism becomes as entrenched as it is in Somalia, an East African nation where there is a heightened militant threat. And unlike Somalia, Mali is willing and able to have dozens of American and European military trainers conduct exercises here, and its leaders are plainly worried about militants who have taken refuge in its vast Saharan north.
“Mali does not have the means to control its borders without the cooperation of the United States,” Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister, said in an interview.
Mali, a landlocked former French colony that is nearly twice the size of Texas with roughly half the population, has a relatively stable, though still fragile, democracy. But it borders Algeria, whose well-equipped military has chased Qaeda militants into northern Mali, where they have adopted a nomadic lifestyle, making them even more difficult to track.
With only 10,000 people in its military and other security forces, and just two working helicopters and a few airplanes, Mali acknowledges how daunting a task it is to try to drive out the militants.
The biggest potential threat comes from as many as 200 fighters from an offshoot of Al Qaeda called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which uses the northern Malian desert as a staging area and support base, American and Malian officials say.
About three months ago, the Qaeda affiliate threatened to attack American forces that operated north of Timbuktu (or Tombouctou) in Mali’s desert, three Defense Department officials said. One military official said the threat contributed to a decision to shift part of the recent training exercise out of that area.
The government of neighboring Mauritania said 12 of its soldiers were killed in an attack there by militants in September. By some accounts, the soldiers were beheaded and their bodies were booby-trapped with explosives.
Two Defense Department officials expressed fear that a main leader of the Qaeda affiliate in Mali, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was under growing pressure to carry out a large-scale attack, possibly in Algeria or Mauritania, to establish his leadership credentials within the organization.
Members of the Qaeda affiliate have not attacked Malian forces, and American and Malian officials privately acknowledge that military officials here have adopted a live-and-let-live approach to the Qaeda threat, focusing instead on rebellious Tuareg tribesmen, who also live in the sparsely populated north.
To finance their operations, the militants exact tolls from smugglers whose routes traverse the Qaeda sanctuary, and collect ransoms in kidnappings. In late October, two Austrians were released after a ransom of more than $2 million was reportedly paid. They had been held in northern Mali after being seized in southern Tunisia in February.
Because of the militants’ activities, American officials eye the largely ungoverned spaces of Mali’s northern desert with concern.
This year, the United States Agency for International Development is spending about $9 million on counterterrorism measures here. Some of the money will expand an existing job training program for women to provide young Malian men in the north with the basic skills to set up businesses like tiny flour mills or cattle enterprises. Some aid will train teachers in Muslim parochial schools in an effort to prevent them from becoming incubators of anti-American vitriol.
The agency is also building 12 FM radio stations in the north to link far-flung villages to an early-warning network that sends bulletins on bandits and other threats. Financing from the Pentagon will produce, in four national languages, radio soap operas promoting peace and tolerance.
The New York Times
“Young men in the north are looking for jobs or something to do with their lives,” said Alexander D. Newton, the director of A.I.D.’s mission in Mali. “These are the same people who could be susceptible to other messages of economic security.”
Concern about Mali’s vulnerability also brought a dozen Army Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, as well as several Dutch and German military instructors, to Mali for the two-week training exercise that ended last month.
Just before noon on a recent sunny, breezy day, Malian troops swept onto a training range here on the savannah north of Bamako, the capital, aboard two CV-22 Ospreys, rotor-blade transport aircraft flown by Air Force Special Operations crews from Hurlburt Field, Fla.
As the dull-gray aircraft landed in a swirling cloud of dust, rotors whomp-whomping, the Malians disembarked single file from the rear ramp in dark-green camouflage uniforms and helmets, M-4 assault rifles at the ready. (The Malians normally use AK-47s, but used American-issue M-4’s for this exercise.)
After a mile-long march through savannah grass, the troops walked down a hill into a small valley. Their target — the mock hide-out of the insurgents — was in sight. But what the Malians did not know was that their American instructors were lying in wait, and suddenly attacked the troops with a sharp staccato of small-arms fire (plastic paint bullets), with red flares soaring high overhead.
The make-believe skirmish lasted just a few minutes. The Malians, shouting to one another and firing at their attackers, retreated from the ambush rather than try to fight through it.
“We’re still learning,” said Capt. Yossouf Traore, a 28-year-old commander, speaking in English that he learned in Texas and at Fort Benning, Ga., as a visiting officer. “We’re getting a lot of experience in leadership skills and making decisions on the spot.”
Even more significant, Captain Traore said, was that the exercise gave his troops an unusual opportunity to train with soldiers from neighboring Senegal. Soon after the Ospreys returned to whisk the Malian soldiers from the training range, two planeloads of Senegalese troops arrived to carry out the same maneuvers.
Still, worrisome indicators are giving some Malian government and religious leaders, as well as American officials, pause about the country’s ability to deal with security risks.
Mali is the world’s fifth-poorest country and, according to some statistics from the United Nations and the State Department, is getting poorer. One in five Malian children dies before age 5. The average Malian does not live to celebrate a 50th birthday. The country’s population, now at 12 million, is doubling nearly every 20 years. Literacy rates hover around 30 percent and are much lower in rural areas.
There are also small signs that radical clerics are beginning to make inroads into the tolerant form of Islam practiced here for centuries by Sunni Muslims. The number of Malian women wearing all-enveloping burqas is still small, but the increase in the past few years is noticeable, religious leaders say.
New mosques are springing up, financed by conservative religious organizations in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran, and scholarships offered to young Malian men to study in those countries are on the rise, Malian officials say.
In Imam Mahamadou Diallo’s neighborhood in Bamako, a congested, fume-choked city on the Niger River, a simmering debate is under way. Imam Diallo, 48, said that two new mosques had been built in his area with financing from Wahhabi extremist groups in Saudi Arabia, and that they were drawing away some members of his mosque.
“Many people here are poor and don’t have work,” Imam Diallo said through an interpreter in Bambara, one of the local languages. “They’re potentially vulnerable to these Wahhabi people coming in with money.”
Just down a bumpy, reddish dirt road, however, the leader of one of these newer mosques, Al Nour, quarreled with Imam Diallo’s characterization. Ali Abdourohmome Cisse, the imam since Al Nour opened in 2002, said he did not know who had financed its construction. He added that no one on his staff, including an Egyptian assistant who helps conduct Friday Prayer in Arabic, advocated any form of extremism.
At El Mouhamadiya, an Islamic school in the neighborhood, more than 700 students, ages 4 to 25, take classes including math, physics and Arabic. “But we don’t train them in terrorism,” said Broulaye Sylla, 25, an administrator. “We don’t talk about jihad.”
Mahmoud Dicko, president of the High Council of Islam in Bamako, acknowledged over soft drinks in his second-story office that the influence of conservative Sunni and even Shiite groups had become more visible, but he said they did not pose a serious threat to Malian society.
“Their influence has limits because of the importance of cultural ties here in Mali,” he said. “We have a tolerant Islam here, a pacifist Islam.”
American and African diplomats here said Mali was one of the few countries in the region that had good relations with most neighbors, making it a likely catalyst for the broader regional security cooperation the United States is trying to foster. American commanders expressed confidence that by training together, the African forces might work together against transnational threats like Al Qaeda. While Mali has no effective helicopter fleet, for instance, it could team up its soldiers with better-equipped neighboring armies, like Algeria’s, to combat a common threat.
“If we don’t help these countries work together, it becomes a much more difficult problem,” said Lt. Col. Jay Connors, the senior American Special Forces officer on the ground here during the exercise.
American and Malian officials acknowledged that there were other hurdles to overcome. The Pentagon needs to better explain the role of its new Africa Command, created in October to oversee military activities on the continent, and to dispel fears that the United States is militarizing its foreign policy, Malian officials said.
American officials say their strategy is to contain the Qaeda threat and train the African armies, a process that will take years. The nonmilitary counterterrorism programs are just starting, and it is too early to gauge results.
“This is a long-term effort,” said Colonel Connors, 45, an Africa specialist from Burlington, Vt., who speaks French and Portuguese. “This is crawl, walk, run, and right now, we’re still in the crawl phase.”

Yes....possible.

Then we can redeploy the aircraft 10,000 miles one way to carry out the strike.....why look at the money we can save by using the same maps twice.:uhoh:

Good point. And think of all the money we could save if we cancel all military training missions from now on!!
:bored:

Guess the Navy had a similar concept to the V-22....but gave up on it a long time ago.

http://www.aerofiles.com/kaman-k16b.jpg

Someone stick a stake in this blood sucker!
 

April 23, 2009 - V-22s Broke Down
Over 140 V-22s have now been delivered to the Marine Corps, so they now outnumber the CH-46Es still in service. The 10 used as airplanes operating from airbases in Iraq are now worn out and have been withdrawn. They dispatched a Navy ship (LHD) from Norfolk to retrieve them, since they couldn't fly home. Ten V-22s were supposed to deploy aboard ship last November with the 26th MEU(SOC), but pre-deployment exercises prompted the Corps to cancel that idea at the last moment. Ten V-22s did deploy aboard ship with the 22nd MEU this month. There is no news on how they are performing, but note that the 22nd MEU is not a MEU(SOC) since it failed to demonstrate that it was (Special Operations Capable) during pre-deployment training. It was only the second MEU to fail such certification since the SOC concept began two decades ago.
Despite all the sales pitches earlier this year about how Marines and V-22 will dominate the battlefield in Afghanistan, it was learned last month that none will deploy with the 8000-man 2nd MEB. This means there are only 10 of 140 V-22s deployed overseas, whereas half the remaining CH-46s remain committed to units in Iraq, Afghanistan, Okinawa, and aboard ships. They throw out the "new" aircraft excuse for this, but the V-22 first flew in 1989 and went into production in 1999.
From Carlton Blog

Supposedly......per this USMC Press Release....the reason the 22 MEU is not SOC qualified is that it does not have a SOC Company assigned. Perhaps what they meant.....is the lack of a "qualified" SOC Company but skipped over that part.

Last but not least: 22nd MEU establishes combat readiness during CERTEX

so what you're saying is....Reno/Carlton are wrong?
 

So despite Dan Reno trying to imply that the MEU didn't get SOC qualified because of the V-22
"There is no news on how they(V-22) are performing, but note that the 22nd MEU is not a MEU(SOC) since it failed to demonstrate that it was (Special Operations Capable) during pre-deployment training."

the reality is it had nothing to do with it.

Imagine that... an inaccuracy from the Reno/Carlton camp. This must be a historical first.

Right then Leatherneck pilot.....what is the gouge on MEU 22 being deployed without the SOC capability? All the predecessors of this MEU were SOC qualified.

Why would we deploy a MEU that was not SOC capable?

Can the MEU not be equipped with 53's and be SOC capable.....it surely does not require Osprey's for that.

Well...if you read your link then you would know the answer to your question:
"Since the 22nd MEU is not deploying with a Marine Special Operations Company, we're simply going to be working toward a recommendation for a MEU certification," said Armstrong.

MarineSpecial Operations Company (MSOC) is the DA for the MEU. The MSOCs replaced the MSPF. An MSOC consist of roughly 100 Marines (about half Recon and the other half command element and infantry). They don't own any aviation assets. Those belong to the MEU commander and the ACE. Therefore the 22 MEU not getting its SOC certification has nothing to do with the V-22. It sounds as though the MSOC may be committed elsewhere. Not sure how that's the V-22's fault.

...By the way... a 'non SOC capable' MEU is still a very capable combat element, which why it is being deployed.

Perhaps the MEU should do some "Shores of Tripoli" live fire excercises.......in Somalia.

I'd like to be there when they arrive.....as I was stood on the beach waving the last time they departed!

USMC Helo

Perhaps now's a good time to look back on all the prior posts here..some by some very qualified people who provide the facts and charts. I'd also stay clear of MILITARY.COM as they even run off a recently retired LtCol close to V22 day to day ops, when he spewed out the facts regarding this amazing gooney bird. Or you can take the low road like some Navy & MC officers and get a chance to hire on with an outfit close to the program. Money or honor, facts or dribble, your choice pal.