Marines' Osprey passes first combat test

McClatchy:

When a couple of VM-22 Osprey tilt rotors joined a fleet of CH-53 helicopters, dropping out of the predawn darkness Friday in the northern end of the Now Zad valley in Helmand Province to deliver the first of more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops, it marked not only the first large assault since President Obama's announcement that the U.S. would be sending more troops here, it also was the first major combat operation for the Osprey.

The Marines are hoping that the operation — a sweep to begin to secure the area around the city of Now Zad dubbed Cobra's Anger — will become a key step toward resuscitating the image of the Osprey, which can take off and land like a helicopter, but in the air can tilt its motors forward to fly like a fixed-wing plane.

"It certainly passed its first big test here with flying colors," said Maj. William Pelletier, a spokesman at the Marine Corp's main base in Afghanistan and Helmand Province, Camp Leatherneck.

The Osprey suffered through a star-crossed development period that took more than 20 years and included several fatal crashes and huge cost overruns. Then, after production models entered service, on its only other combat deployment so far, in Iraq's Anbar Province in 2007 through 2009, the complicated aircraft was panned by the Government Accounting Office and critics in Congress because of various maintenance problems and questions about its performance.

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At a hearing on the day the report was released, Rep. Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat, said: "It has problems in hot weather, it has problems in cold weather, it has problems with sand, it has problems with high altitude, and it has restricted maneuverability. The list of what the Osprey can't do is longer than the list of what it can do."

He then said that the Pentagon should quit buying them, and the GAO urged the Pentagon to look into other options. It declined.

The Marines countered that the aircraft can do extraordinary things because of its speed and range, and that it does better at higher altitudes than critics say.

Afghanistan, with its great distances and challenging terrain — and more likelihood that the aircraft will face combat — could start to make it clear whether the Marines are right and the VM-22 is worth the cost, now more than $120 million each.

"I don't think the Marines have satisfactorily answered that yet," said Richard Whittle, author of the upcoming book 'The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey.' "It's expensive to operate and it's going to take more time and more missions to answer that question, but this deployment will start to fill in some of the blanks on whether it's worth it.

"If it saves lives or somehow wins a battle, maybe people will say that it is," Whittle said. "But I think that to some degree that will always be in the eye of the beholder."

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"With the right parts, these planes will be as reliable as anything out there," said Gunnery Sgt. Jake Korkian, 36, of Fort Worth, Texas, who has worked with the Osprey program since 1996 and is in charge of the squadron's maintenance for the airframe, hydraulics, and other systems.

Among the parts that have to be replaced more often than expected are certain hydraulic lines — which on the Osprey are built of light but expensive and brittle titanium — and clamps for them.

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Speed and distance make the Osprey a good fit for Afghanistan. It can surprise the Taliban much more than traditional choppers can. I think it is going to help the Marines win battles.