Fixes for one of the well-known problems with Hard Clutch Engagement funded from 2026 - $48M for 45 kits - full program in due course will cost $138M for 328 kits

U.S. Navy Budgets For V-22 Clutch Upgrade As It Narrows Down On Root Cause | Aviation Week Network

Marines Go All In
 

https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-mari...into-the-2060s

While the Marines and Navy are flying their Ospreys again, it has been reported that the Air Force has not, almost two months after the ungrounding. The above indicates the Marines/Navy are going all in to keep the Osprey through 2060. Perhaps it is time to transfer the V-22 special op missions from the Air Force to the Marines along with their aircraft. Always seemed that is where they belonged anyway.

`Fixes for one of` - not sure I would want to fly an aircraft with `so many` potentially fatal failure modes.

Then make sure that you never fly in a helicopter.

Yup - all that metal,thrashing around and vibrating at highspeed, and very limited "glide" capability

Sometimes you HAVE to use them but ....................

Helicopters do not so much glide as plummet. (To paraphrase a certain sheep farmer)
Do you have any idea how many single points of failure there are in a rotary wing aircraft? As but one example, there was an Apache crash near Houston about 8 years ago where one of the rotary wings departed the aircraft during flight. There is more than one way that such a calamity can happen, (Yes, that one ended in tears).
But people get into helicopters every day.
Maybe DogTailRed2 is playing Chicken Little.

That report is wrong. USN returned them to flight 8th March. Took a few days before we got the confirmed flight but they have been regularly spotted airborne, particularly the ospreys COD doing supply runs to carriers

I guess it is a balance of necessity and risk. For Navy and Marines the Osprey does play a more critical role in their 'every day business', e.g. in supplying the Carriers and moving troops in general, i.e. without them also others can't 'play'/are massively impeded in 'playing'. In case of the air force it is primarily the crews themselves who are impeded. That shifts the 'return on risk' towards a more prudent approach. I wouldn't read too much into that. It will be fixed and once the balance is considered as being acceptable they will resume flying. They are here to stay.

I guess one problem with the perception of risk of the Osprey is that it looks like a chubby, benign Turboprop Transport aircraft - i.e. the ones which have to be actively forced out of the sky while its accident statistics are on a typical helicopter level (which it indeed is), compounded by its points of failure being novel (appearing additional ones while in reality being mostly simply different ones) compared to helicopters.

Yes, henra. New tech brings with it its own failure modes. :ok:

An update on the Air Force’s effort:

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/ai...urn-to-flight/

Again, it seems that the special ops missions that the Air Force conducts with their V-22’s could better be done by the Navy/Marines using the Air Force’s CV-22’s at a substantial cost savings.