No - the Osprey is not a replacment for the Herk/H-53. The Iran Hostage Rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, is merely the standard they are using to measure performance.
Most proponents of the McRaven philosophy of Relative Superiority and the key element of Surprise suppose that the single biggest risk for Eagle Claw was it required two days to execute. The quest for conducting this type of long-range mission in a "single period of darkness" has been used as the standard to measure the Osprey against.
I suppose it's been applied retro-actively - in other words, we decided we liked the Osprey & tried to figure out how we would have used it in the past.
That's why it's linked to Eagle Claw - not as a replacement for Herks & -53s.
FWIW - It would have required refueling had it done the Iran Rescue Mission. It also would have had to go in much larger numbers than the RH-53s. Part of the problems I alluded to very early in this thread about letting the Marines dictate the dimensions before AFSOC got involved...
Maybe the C-model will be bigger!
