By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
"...One concern of the next COD’s capabilities voiced by some observers is that the F135 engine of the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter is too large to fit in a C-2A and too heavy to highline between ships. It can be carried on the cargo hook of an H-53E helicopter or a V-22, but for ranges far shorter than 1,300 nautical miles. A costly new-design COD would be required to carry the sealed engine inside the cargo bay.
"Our idea previously was to carry a lot of engines on the ship and then repair them," said retired Vice Adm. James M. Zortman, sector vice president of Global Logistics and Operational Support for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, and a former commander, Naval Air Forces. "As we’ve gotten into more and more reliable engine designs, we don’t necessarily put the whole engine together. It is components of engines and the ability to move the components when you break the engine down are pretty small. So the idea of slinging a full engine under anything, while you can come up with the scenario where you might need to do that, a very vast majority of support situations rely on the reliability of that engine and then the ability to move components around rather than whole engines."
The Navy already has taken a preliminary look at the V-22 as a potential COD. A Military Utility Assessment of the Marine Corps’ MV-22B Osprey was conducted June 12-17 onboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman "with the purpose of assessing the V-22’s integration into carrier cyclic operations during performance of the COD mission," Scolpino said. The results of the assessment had not been reported by the Navy by press time July 15.
Brian M. Roby, an official with Boeing’s San Diego field office, and a former C-2A pilot, said the V-22 can carry 20,000 pounds of cargo internally in 320 cubic feet of car go volume, and has an external cargo hook for carrying loads that will not fit in the cargo bay, up to 15,000 pounds.
He said the V-22 could carry an F135 engine for "a couple hundred miles."
Bell Boeing has developed 430-gallon Mission Auxiliary Tanks (MATs); up to three can be inserted in the V-22’s cargo bay. Roby said the company is developing another roll-in MAT design that will allow the V-22 to fly the required 1,300 nautical miles with room for 20 passengers. The V-22 has seats along the sides of the cargo bay that fold upward to clear space for other payloads.
Rick Linhart, Bell’s vice president for Military Business Development, said the Air Force’s CV-22s have extra fuel tanks in the aft portions of the landing gear sponsons and that the Marine Corps’ MV-22Bs have the plumbing for such tanks already installed. He also said Bell-Boeing is looking at conformal fuel tanks and other solutions to enable the V-22 to reach the 1,300 nautical mile requirement.
Roby said the V-22, unlike a conventional fixedwing aircraft, does not require headwind over the deck to land or take off, and as such would increase the flexibility of COD operations from a carrier.
The V-22’s vertical flight capabilities would enable it to use its hoist to deliver and retrieve personnel and light cargo from the small helicopter pads of surface ships and even from surfaced submarines, duties currently performed by helicopters.
The heat from the engine exhaust plume of the V-22’s engines currently limits the types of ships that the aircraft can operate from, and flight-deck modifications to accommodate the engine exhaust would be an additional cost. A 2009 analysis from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said, "The deployment of the MV-22 Osprey has resulted in ship flight deck buckling that has been attributed to the excessive heat impact from engine exhaust plumes. Navy studies have indicated that repeated deck buckling will likely cause deck failure before planned ship life." [Mitigation of this issue already operational with the rotors being tilted from vertical to alleviate the heat issue.]
The V-22 does not feature cabin pressurization, a factor that normally limits the altitude at which the aircraft can transit with passengers, typically 10,000 feet, without supplemental oxygen, rather than the aircraft’s 25,000-foot service ceiling. Roby said the V-22’s technology can enable it to avoid bad weather and the need to climb over it.
"If weather dictates, per Navy regulations, passenger flights are cleared up to 13,000 feet for up to three hours, or approximately 700 nautical miles at Osprey cruise speeds," he said.
The V-22 has the ability to refuel in flight. Last year, an Air Force CV-22B flew from New Mexico to the eastern Atlantic Ocean to lift a dummy passenger from a submarine at sea, and then flew back to New Mexico, a round-trip distance of 2,600 nautical miles in 11.5 hours with three aerial refuelings.
Roby says the V-22 will free the carrier strike group from the logistic tethers of runways in range ashore, and enable operations from mobile landing platforms and combat logistics ships [and LHAs].
"My opinion on developing future expectations for this critical mission area is that it has as much to do with understanding airborne logistics as it does with employing V-22’s tiltrotor technology and imagination to streamline delivery methods and provide logistics efficiencies, rather than carrier-only delivery," he said.
Roby said the V-22 would offer low risk and affordability and efficiencies in operating costs, logistics support, life-cycle costs, helped by the large (400-plus) Osprey production run and joint procurement with the Marine Corps and Air Force.
"The versatility of this machine also will change the view of the COD," Linhart said. "The COD, certainly, will be able to pick up parts, go to austere locations to do that, [and] land on more than just the carrier in the carrier group, but I think that is just the tip of the iceberg of what the possibilities are. The Navy will have no trouble figuring out what kinds of missions they can pick up as a result."
Roby said the V-22 has the versatility also to serve as an airborne tanker. In August, Bell-Boeing planned to demonstrate the tanker potential in a proof-of-concept flight involving dragging a refueling basket with an F/A-18 strike fighter in the refueling position.
Since the beginning of the V-22, the program of record has had a documented Navy requirement for 48 V-22s, though the role of those aircraft has never been defined, Linhart said."