MV-22 Osprey Soon to Try it Again
Part 1/2
Crucial test
By BOB COX
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
May. 27, 2002
When the V-22 Osprey lifts off again Wednesday for a crucial round of flight tests, Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing Co. officials hope to show that they have fixed myriad mechanical flaws that contributed to a December 2000 crash and the aircraft's grounding. But there is a bigger question that the manufacturers, the Marines and the Pentagon must answer in the coming months about the V-22.Can the revolutionary tilt-rotor, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, perform hard combat maneuvers without going into a deadly roll? A series of reports presented to Pentagon officials last year suggests that the V-22, when flown like a helicopter, possesses unforeseen characteristics that can cause it to lose lift on one side and go into a roll. Close to the ground, that would probably cause a crash. Concerns about unusual aerodynamic problems have haunted the Osprey since April 2000, when a V-22 suddenly rolled out of control and crashed into the desert at Marana, Ariz., killing all 19 Marines aboard. The Marines blamed the accident on pilot errors that caused the aircraft to undergo a turbulent condition called vortex ring state. A top Marine general dismissed the accident as "nothing new ... that we haven't seen in helicopters." But tests performed for several months afterward showed that there appears to be something different about the V-22.
Seven times during 21 high-altitude test flights at the Navy's Patuxent River air base, a V-22 suddenly began to roll when it was flown like the craft involved in the Arizona crash. "There were some long faces on Marine officers at the Pentagon the first time that happened," says Philip Coyle, the former head of the Pentagon's weapons testing office who has frequently raised questions about the V-22. "It got everybody's attention." In one case, a V-22 reached an 84-degree bank, its wings nearly perpendicular to the ground, according to a Bell/Boeing presentation to the Pentagon's "Blue Ribbon Panel," which investigated the aircraft after the 2000 accidents. A Pentagon source familiar with the V-22 testing says the aircraft lost 2,000 feet of altitude before the pilots regained control - a margin for error that probably would not exist in a military operation. "There is a flight characteristic here that doesn't exist in a helicopter," says J. Gordon Leishman, an aerospace engineering professor and helicopter aerodynamics expert at the University of Maryland who has studied tilt-rotor aircraft. Officials with Bell dispute that conclusion. They say the V-22 is safe when flown within its prescribed limits. The V-22's chief test pilot, Boeing's Tom MacDonald, acknowledges that valid questions about the aircraft remain to be answered. But MacDonald, who will be at the controls often during the upcoming flight tests, says he's confident that the V-22 will be proved safe and effective.
"There's no doubt in my mind," McDonald says. "None whatsoever. We're going to go out and and fly that aircraft as aggressively as we can and as aggressively as we think other pilots will do it." Flight tests were expected to begin in April and were delayed a second time in early May. The Marines announced Friday the first flight in 18 months will take place Wednesday. The tests, which will be conducted at the Patuxent Naval Air Station in southern Maryland, could last two years. A lot is riding on the flight tests for Fort Worth-based Bell, which employs nearly 5,800 workers in the area and about 250 in Amarillo. Bell officials long ago bet the company's future on the tilt-rotor technology of the V-22. They had even laid plans for a civilian version, though development of that aircraft has been drastically scaled back until the verdict is in on the V-22.
Pentagon officials have indicated that the new testing amounts to a last chance for the V-22. They have said that if problems persist, the program will be killed. The two crashes, eight months apart, led to a flurry of investigations and reviews of the V-22 program. Two Pentagon-appointed panels endorsed the Osprey last year, saying it had no fundamental safety problems. But both called for much more extensive flight tests. The `Star-Telegram,' in consultation with outside experts, reviewed many of the technical reports made to both the Blue Ribbon Panel and a review panel headed by a top NASA official. Officials with Bell Helicopter declined to discuss the reports in detail.
Although final reports by the two review panels touched on some of the issues, none were highlighted as major concerns. Others were dismissed. The panel headed by Henry McDonald, administrator of the NASA space agency's Ames Research Center in California, concluded in its public report that "there are no known aeromechanics phenomena that would stop the safe and orderly development and deployment of the V-22." Some helicopter experts have been sharply critical of that conclusion. "The McDonald report looks to me like a whitewash," said Dave Jenney, the retired chief engineer for Bell competitor Sikorsky Aircraft Co. "It glosses over some things" that are crucial for a military airplane, he adds. McDonald declined to discuss the panel findings for this article. "He feels it's a thorough and complete report," NASA spokeswoman Ann Hutchinson says. The studies failed to convince some top Pentagon officials of the V-22's safety. As recently as May 2, Defense Undersecretary E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, the government's chief weapons buyer, said he remained skeptical about the tilt-rotor's safety and reliability. "We have not done a lot of the tests of the V-22 in combat maneuvering," Aldridge said in a meeting with reporters. "We don't have many friends up there in the Pentagon," admits MacDonald, the Boeing test pilot, who has acted as a spokesman for Bell and Boeing on the upcoming flight test program.