V-22 arrival in winter well planned and NEEDED !
Texas-built Osprey tilt-rotors heading to Afghanistan
12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 21, 2009
By RICHARD WHITTLE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON The Texas-built V-22 Osprey, a helicopter-airplane hybrid military transport whose reputation still suffers from its troubled 25-year development, is on its way to its toughest test yet – the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
VMM-261, a Marine Corps V-22 squadron based in North Carolina, will take 10 to 12 Ospreys to Afghanistan in November, the announcement said. Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Matt Morgan said the Osprey would carry troops and supplies and evacuate casualties in Helmand province, where Marines have been fighting insurgents regularly.
The Osprey, a "tilt-rotor" that swivels two large rotors on its wingtips upward to fly like a helicopter and forward to fly like an airplane, is built partly in Fort Worth and Amarillo by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and partly by Boeing Co. in Pennsylvania.
The program provides more than 500 jobs in Fort Worth and a similar number in Amarillo, Bell spokesman Tom Dolney said.
The Marines previously used the Osprey in Iraq, where it defied predictions by critics who said it would suffer crashes akin to three that killed 30 people during the aircraft's lengthy development.
Afghanistan's high altitudes and hot climate – problems for any rotorcraft – and the ferocity of Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents there figure to make this deployment far more strenuous.
The Osprey was rarely shot at in Iraq, which is barely above sea level.
"Afghanistan is certainly a unique operating environment, but we do feel the aircraft has unique capabilities and is uniquely capable of operating in that environment," Morgan said. The Osprey's ability to fly like an airplane gives it a cruising speed of around 275 mph, more than twice the top speed of most military helicopters.