April 14, 2007 in Nation/World

Osprey deployment scheduled

Dave Montgomery McClatchy
 
Associated Press photo

A new Osprey flies toward a landing zone Friday at Quantico, Va. The VMM 263 squadron will be sent in September to Iraq, said the commandant of the Marine Corps.
(Full-size photo)

at a glance

An aviation hybrid

» The V-22 Osprey is a joint venture of Textron Inc. and Boeing Co., which assembles the aircraft’s fuselage at its plant in Ridley Township, Pa. The Osprey can take off vertically like a helicopter, but also can fly like an airplane at high speeds by tilting its engines forward.

» The military plans to purchase a total of 458 Ospreys, the bulk of them destined for the Marines.

» Because Ospreys are able to fly like airplanes, they’re twice as fast, much quieter, and capable of withdrawing under enemy fire far more rapidly than a helicopter. Moreover, the Osprey also can fly at much higher altitude, up to 10,000 feet with passengers, putting it out of the range of shoulder-fired missiles and machine gun fire.

» The Osprey is designed to ferry 24 Marines at a time or haul up to 20,000 pounds of cargo at more than 250 mph, twice as fast as the Vietnam-era CH-46.

Philadelphia Inquirer

WASHINGTON – A Marine Corps aviation squadron known as the Thunder Chickens will head to Iraq in September to introduce the Bell-Boeing V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft to combat, ferrying troops and cargo across a turbulent province known as the heart of the country’s Sunni Muslim insurgency.

Ten V-22 Ospreys will be based at the al Assad Marine Corps air station in Anbar province after the 171-member Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, or VMM 263, lands in Iraq next fall. The unit has been training for more than a year out of its home base at New River Marine Corps Air Station, N.C.

Gen. James T. Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, announced the time and date of the first V-22 deployment at a Pentagon briefing Friday, joining other Marine officials and V-22 boosters in expressing confidence that the aircraft has fully resolved the problems of a troubled past and is ready for war.

The aircraft takes off and lands like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, reaching speeds and distances well beyond those of traditional helicopters.

The aircraft program has struggled to survive at times and was grounded for 18 months after two fatal crashes in 2000. Critics continue to question the Osprey’s suitability for combat, but the Pentagon announcement Friday constituted an unqualified endorsement of its airworthiness after an extensive redesign and more than 19,000 hours of flight tests.

“We think we can add a lot to the fight,” said Lt. Col. Paul J. Rock Jr., the commander of the Thunder Chickens, a nickname passed down from a predecessor squadron. Rock’s unit was designated as the first combat V-22 squadron last year but learned of the specific assignment only about three weeks ago, he said.

The squadron, which represents the first wave of V-22 combat deployments, will be based in a hard-to-control province with more than 1 million Iraqis, a defiant Sunni insurgency and onetime hot spots such as Fallujah and Ramadi.

Recent stories in Nation/World
No comments on this story so far. Add yours!

    You must be logged in to post comments.
    Please create a profile or log in here.