I hate to stray from the "53: is it or isn't it heavy lift?" discussion but I have to digress to something 21st Century said about Majors Brow and Gruber who were involved in the infamous "Marana crash::
I think we can all agree with their advise that, “They introduced this aircraft and because of their life sacrifices, the Osprey of today is safe for the pilot, the crew and their passengers…”
I hear this a lot, that the V-22 is way different now...how much "safer" the V-22 is now than it was "back then." And so I have to ask: Just HOW is the aircraft different from the one that Majors Brow and Gruber flew in April of 2000? Does it have a reliable VRS indicator now? You know, like the stall-warning horn in an airplane, that can physically sense when a wing is at a critical angle of attack? Does it even have an A-VRS indicator? Something that would tell the pilots when
one proprotor is entering into VRS? Or does it just come with a computer program that tells the pilots when they are entering a critical
range of speed and rate of descent, which is not nearly the same thing as an actual stall-warning sensor in an airplane.
I guess what I'm getting at is this: If two more pilots in one of these new, modernized,
competely-different V-22s, pilots with perhaps not a lot of helicopter time, get into the very same kind-of-rushed, kind-of-behind-the-power-curve situation as Majors Brow and Gruber, could they still find themselves getting to A-VRS without sufficient warning?
You might counter this with, "Well, the synthetic warnings programmed into the FMS will give them
plenty of warning!" And I will say, "Really?" Let me ask you how many times the stall-warning alarm went off in the cockpit of that Air France 447 Airbus that stalled its way down into the Atlantic Ocean? Answer: 75 times. THREE pilots in that cockpit, stall-warning going off and not ONE of those geniuses suggested lowering the nose and, you know, flying out of the stall. Because they were confused. But that will never happen to pilots in combat, will it?
And V-22 pilots will do okay with a warning that tells them only when they're getting into dangerous airspeed/rate of descent combinations.
So again, how is the
aircraft different?