By John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor
When the CV-22 finally reaches Air Force Special Operations
Command, it will do more than simply replace some aging aircraft.
It promises to transform the way AFSOC operates and how it thinks
about its mission. In fact, the Osprey's impact might be felt
beyond the Special Operations Forces.
The CV-22 is the Air Force version of the new Osprey tilt-rotor,
an entirely new breed of aircraft that is neither pure airplane
nor pure helicopter but has features of both. The Osprey takes
off and lands like a helicopter, lifted by two huge rotors on
the tips of its wings. Once in flight, the rotors can tilt forward,
turning the aircraft into a high-speed turboprop.
Over the years, many have attempted to develop such a hybrid,
but the Osprey is the first aircraft offering sufficient reliability
and utility to be of practical military value. The aircraft is
about half the size of a C-130 transport.
The rotors can again be tilted toward 90 degrees for either
a vertical landing or a rolling landing if it is heavily loaded.
The Osprey will be able to take off and land within the exact
same space as the H-53 Super Jolly series of helicopters it will
replace and do it more stealthily and quietly than any previous
large rotorcraft.
Assuming that it successfully completes its flight test program-and
all signs are that it will--the aircraft will begin operational
Air Force service in about five years. Military leaders expect
the Osprey to remain in the inventories of at least three US
armed services halfway into the next century.
"This aircraft is so revolutionary, ... we have no idea
of [its] boundaries," said Air Force Lt. Col. Jonathan Jay,
CV-22 program manager. "This aircraft is going to have capabilities
that we're [now] unaware of."
The Osprey is being developed by a contractor team of Bell
and Boeing, under the overall direction of the Marine Corps.
The Corps has a desperate need to replace ancient CH-46 Sea Knight
helicopters, many of which are already five years beyond their
planned retirement points. The Marine Corps version, called the
MV-22, will ferry troops, supplies, and small vehicles from amphibious
assault ships to landing zones ashore.
The Marine Corps may have the lead, but the Air Force has
viewed the Osprey, with its ability to fly fast and far and land
vertically, as a natural for SOF activities.
Resurrection
Unlike helicopters, the CV-22 won't need to be disassembled
and loaded into a large cargo jet to get overseas; with a single
refueling, it will be able to self-deploy and fly 2,100 nautical
miles on its own to get to the action.
It will also be able to fly from a ship or forward staging
area over a distance of 500 nautical miles with 18 troops and
then return without need of refueling. Indeed, it was largely
on the strength of the V-22's promise as an SOF platform that
Congress forcibly resurrected the program in 1989. The Pentagon
canceled it to save money, but lawmakers demanded its return
to the defense program.
Current Air Force plans call for the service to acquire 50
CV-22s. USAF will piggyback on the Marine program, paying only
for the aircraft it buys and for the development of the special
features the AFSOC version will require.
These features include extra fuel tanks in the wings, terrain-following
and terrain-avoidance radar, a more detailed digital map, an
in-flight refueling probe, and the Suite of Integrated Radio-frequency
Countermeasures, or SIRC. The USAF model will also have additional
"buckets" of chaff and flares as well as two additional
radios. Later in the program, a gun will be added as part of
a preplanned product improvement program.
The Navy, too, will buy a search and rescue and utility version
called HV-22, but the 48 aircraft it has in mind would come at
the end of the V-22 production run. The V-22's wings rotate and
its rotors fold for compact stowage aboard ship. All three types
will come with a forward-looking infrared system.
Today, the Army is the only US armed service that is not involved
in the program. It formerly was a partner with the other services,
and it viewed the V-22 as the eventual replacement for the aging
CH-47 Chinook helicopter, but it bowed out in the 1980s because
it lacked the money for a long-term effort.
In Air Force plans, the CV-22 is earmarked for what AFSOC
calls the "long range covert-penetration" mission.
The mission is handled today by the MH-53J Pave Low III helicopter,
a heavily modified version of the H-53 series designed in the
1950s. The Pave Low III is used to fly at treetop level or lower
to get commandos deep inside enemy territory and out again. It
can carry small vehicles-jeeps, motorcycles, or all-terrain vehicles-and
operate in all types of weather.
However, the Pave Low lacks long range. For most missions,
it requires multiple refuelings from another AFSOC aircraft,
the MC-130P. The introduction of the 50 CV-22s will give the
force the long legs it always has lacked and, at a stroke, will
permit the Air Force to retire 80 AFSOC aircraft-Pave Lows, tankers,
and some MH-60G Pave Hawks, which complement the Pave Low but
lack its lifting power or range.
Deep and Dark
The long-range covert penetration mission is an important
one, having unique requirements. To do it, AFSOC forces operate
"in the hours of darkness," Jay said, noting, "That's
when we operate very well and our adversaries tend not to."
Operating in nighttime darkness, Pave Lows and Pave Hawks
find holes in an enemy's radar coverage, slip through, and go
to the objective over the path least likely to attract attention.
Refuelings-performed in blackout conditions at breathtakingly
low altitudes-are inherently risky.
For very long missions deep inside enemy territory, the aircraft
have to hide during the day, continuing their mission at night.
It is not easy to keep these machines under wraps. With their
array of extra tanks, FLIR turrets, radomes, infrared countermeasures,
antennas, and other gadgetry, the SOF choppers are unlikely to
be mistaken for civilian aircraft, even at a distance.
Air Force special operators have concluded that the CV-22
will vastly simplify the mission. It offers "double the
radius and double the speed" of the MH-53J, Jay noted, adding
that this adds up to "doing things faster, without refueling,
and offering us more flexibility" to undertake missions
previously considered not feasible or simply out of range.
Jay cited a case in point: Operation Eagle Claw, which is
better known as Desert One, the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue
US hostages held in Iran.
"If you recall Desert One," Jay said, "that
operation was to have taken a couple of days," including
on-ground and aerial refuelings, as well as daytime hiding layovers.
With the CV-22, he said, AFSOC could do the entire mission "in
one night." The Osprey could fly at 300 knots and even incorporates
some stealth features, such as infrared suppressors on the exhausts.
"The single greatest advantage" of the CV-22, Jay
said, is its range. "We could take a 10-man team 700 miles
in, 700 miles out, [and] drop them off, ... and that's all in
the hours of darkness; ... whereas before, if we did that with
a helicopter, it would take at least three or four air refuelings,
[and] probably a full day. ... That's the quantum leap, here."
Combining the speed of a turboprop with the attributes of
a helicopter also adds mission flexibility in other ways, Jay
said.
"If we need to go somewhere really fast, we can do that.
If the mission calls for ... going really low and slow, we can
do that, too." While the CV-22 will have the inherent capability
for "slung" loads like its Marine cousins, AFSOC doesn't
plan to use it in that configuration.
Jay noted, moreover, that the CV-22 will give Air Force SOF
crews a highly upgraded, sophisticated electronic warfare suite.
"If we do go in harm's way, it gives us a much better potential
of getting out safely," he said.
Flying Armor
Officials also cite the aircraft's inherent battle-worthiness.
To keep its exotic technology flying in the event of a system
failure or hostile fire, Osprey's designers made its systems
redundant, separated, and in some places, armored. One engine
can power both rotors if necessary, thanks to cross-shafting
between them. The composite materials can absorb the hit of a
bullet and not crack. The seats and some parts of the cockpit
are also armored.
The Air Force will put into the CV-22 a flight crew of three-pilot,
copilot, and flight engineer. The service has not yet decided
which of the three will be designated to use the Osprey's chin-mounted
gun. "I think it may be that ... depending on where they
are in the mission, it might be that any of the [three] could
operate the gun," Jay said.
The computer displays will update threats in near real time,
offering the crew a chance to see in a 3-D display where they
can safely fly. Should any of the multifunction displays fail,
others will take over its task, reducing the risk of "flying
blind" from a display failure or lucky hit. There are "no
knobs" on the computers, Jay noted.
The CV-22 won't be able to land like a conventional airplane,
moving down the runway horizontally with engines tilted forward
like propellers. The propellers are too big for this and would
strike the ground.
Even so, each CV-22 will have a capability to make such a
landing on a one-shot basis. The propellers are designed to break
in a way that aids crew survivability, if such a landing were
made in an emergency. The composite rotors, rather than breaking
up into guillotine-like pieces of shrapnel, would simply shred
into brittle filaments. The aircraft could, in an emergency,
make an unpowered landing in helicopter mode; it has a limited
ability to autorotate to a hard but survivable landing.
The Osprey can even fly backwards. The trick can be done by
tilting the rotors past 90 degrees vertical. At this point, the
power to fly backwards is more a quirk than a capability, but
such maneuvers may someday yield a useful combat tactic for the
special operators. Such characteristics will be explored during
the Air Force's Initial Operational Test and Evaluation effort.
On the CSAR?
The revolutionary Osprey is being considered for another important
Air Force mission-Combat Search and Rescue. Today, the Air Force
meets this requirement with a force of MH-60G helicopters. Officials
note that the Air Force has not changed this situation and at
present plans to continue using MH-60s for the task.
Even so, change may well come. Brig. Gen. Richard L. Comer,
deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy and missions,
ASD for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, recently
told a Washington audience that the CV-22 offers too many advantages
in CSAR work for the Air Force not to buy it, eventually, for
that purpose.
In CSAR, Comer said, "The critical element ... is time,"
since there may only be a few minutes in which to rescue a downed
crewman who is either badly injured or facing imminent capture.
The CV-22, he said, is a "deep battle machine." That
fact dovetails with the Air Force, he said, because USAF is "culturally
... a deep battle force."
At present, Air Combat Command manages the CSAR mission, with
its equipment falling under ACC purview. According to Comer,
the CSAR and SOF communities "often don't communicate well
when it comes to planning requirements and missions." He
speculated that CSAR operators are afraid that they will be "swallowed"
by AFSOC.
Comer voiced his approval of the CV-22 for CSAR because it
offers the opportunity to "go in high," if such an
approach would work better in certain missions. Also, he pointed
out, the CV-22 can self-deploy to a far-forward base, whereas
CSAR helicopters must be transported in a heavy airlifter like
the C-17 or C-5, undergo reassembly at the destination, and then
go through test flights before use.
Comer cautioned, however, that the purchase of CV-22s for
the CSAR mission is still not in the Air Force's plan. USAF also
has not identified funds to apply to such a program.
Ever since the aircraft's engineering and manufacturing development
program got under way, developers have carried out simulations
to improve the cockpit layout and arrangement of gear inside
the aircraft for maximum efficiency and common sense, Jay noted.
"We've made lots of changes based on getting a real wide
variety of crew members in [the simulator] from all different
SOF backgrounds," he said. "This airplane [has] the
capabilities of a helicopter and the capabilities of a C-130,
and we have inputs from both of those career fields to really
understand how to maximize that system."
Like a C-130, the V-22 has a rear ramp for loading vehicles
and cargo. Like a helicopter, it has a rescue hoist, which is
located inside the cabin to avoid drag and swings out in helicopter
mode.
Jay added that "I think this [the extensive simulator
work] is really revolutionary. It's a huge step for us in maximizing
our cockpit management system." By that, he means that,
when IOT&E gets under way with the real aircraft, endless
notional rehearsals in the simulator will "put us way ahead
of the game" and keep IOT&E more of a "validation"
experience than a discovery period for making costly changes
to the aircraft.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan flew the V-22
in September and emerged pronouncing it "a very easy airplane
to fly." Ryan said he had no trouble adjusting to what he
expected to be the tricky part of the flight-making the transition
from helicopter mode to airplane mode. The left hand control
is a throttle in airplane mode and functions like a collective
in helicopter mode; on the right hand, the "stick"
between the pilot's legs functions as the cyclic in helicopter
mode.
