The US military has lifted the grounding guidance for the military’s V-22 Osprey fleet, roughly three months after the entire fleet was grounded following a deadly Air Force Special Operations crash off the coast of Japan. The Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy are expected to begin flying their V-22 variants in a phased approach over the next several weeks.
The military-wide grounding of V-22 aircraft in December came a week after eight airmen were killed when their CV-22 crashed off the coast of Yakushima Island, Japan — as well as a number of other deadly crashes over the last few years. Military officials said in a series of briefings on Wednesday that they had confidence in returning the Ospreys to the air after an Air Force investigation identified the “materiel failure” responsible for the crash.
“There is nothing more important to me than safety of our air commandos and the joint force in which we support. … I have high confidence that the protocols we’re putting in place will avoid a catastrophic event like this happening again in the future,” Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, told reporters. “But I never say things with a finality, because there is an inherent risk of what we do in military operations.”
Bauernfeind said the Accent Investigation Board — which investigates all of the facts and circumstances around an accident and produces a publicly releasable report outlining the details — is still ongoing.
Col. Brian Taylor, the program manager of the Naval Air Systems Command V-22 joint program office, told reporters Wednesday that while NAVAIR was rescinding its grounding guidance for the V-22 and implementing various maintenance and procedural changes to mitigate any further issues, it was up to each service to determine how that guidance will be implemented for their units.
The grounding “has hurt the services,” Taylor said, but added there was “not any sort of demand from the services to get the aircraft back into play.”
In a series of briefings to reporters on Wednesday, officials expressed confidence that the Osprey would be safe to fly in but provided few specifics as to what failed in the deadly November CV-22 crash. Each of the service representatives who briefed reporters explained that their service would be taking a phased approach to getting their V-22 variants up and running again, focusing on getting pilots and crews back to the level of proficiency they had before the grounding.
Taylor told reporters the November crash was due to an “unprecedented” component failure — “the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way,” he said — though he declined to say which component it was, or how it failed. He also said the investigation of “the why” is still ongoing.
It was unclear what, if any, operation limitations NAVAIR was imposing on the military’s fleet of V-22s — for example, limitations on the speed or duration at which they can be flown. Asked about potential limitations, Taylor declined to discuss it due to operational security concerns.
Taylor also declined to provide specifics on what “maintenance and procedural changes” were being implemented to address the component failure, but did say the maintenance checks were not new checks necessarily, but ones that already existed which would be conducted more frequently.
Ultimately, Taylor said the changes were the result of data from hundreds of thousands of flight hours combined with what they have since learned about what went wrong.
“We’ve got terabytes, literally, of data from 750,000 flight hours,” Taylor said. “And so with that, and what we’ve learned from the mishap, all of that together really is what has built the picture of how these mitigation steps are going to provide some more security for us moving forward.”
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the Assistant Deputy Commandant for Aviation, said that the Corps’ MV-22s were returning to flight with “absolute confidence in the analysis by NAVAIR as the airworthiness certification authority” for the V-22 program.
For Marine MV-22 units, Joyce told reporters that the aircraft was returning to flight in a “deliberate, methodical” and phased approach. The first phase will include the Corps’ “most experienced pilots and aircrew” conducting maintenance check flights, he said. The Corps will then move to having more junior pilots fly alongside instructor pilots, and finally into “mission-specific training.”
In total, Joyce said it would take roughly 30 days for an MV-22 squadron to get back up to speed with the basics, and it would not be until the late spring or summer until the Marine Corps was back at the readiness levels prior to the Osprey grounding.
Navy Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, also told reporters Wednesday that the Navy CMV-22s returning to flight would be a “crawl, walk, run incremental approach.” There will first be enhanced maintenance checks, Cheever said, followed by functional flight checks done by the Navy’s most experienced pilots.
“Return to flight is not the same as return to mission,” Cheever said, explaining that it will be weeks, if not months, before CMV-22 pilots and crews will be again transporting personnel and equipment to aircraft carriers. He added that the Navy’s reliance on the C-2A Greyhound aircraft during the grounding has resulted in “very little operational impact” to the Navy.
Similar to the other two services, AFSOC’s Bauernfeind said his command is also implementing a conditions-based, “multi-phased approach” to returning to mission with the CV-22s which he expects to take roughly 12 weeks.
“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.
