Marines Use Osprey In First Medevac Mission
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By Michael Fabey
With its star battlefield aircraft — the MV-22 Osprey — under fire in Washington for cost and performance issues, the U.S. Marine Corps counterattacked June 29 with an announcement that highlights the versatility of the tiltrotor.
The Marines said they used two MV-22B Ospreys for a ship-to-shore emergency medical evacuation (medevac) of a sailor, marking the first time the aircraft had been used to conduct such a mission from the sea.
While the Ospreys were deployed and touted for their abilities to move Marines safely and quickly into combat zones, rescue missions figure strongly in the aircraft’s development heritage.
The Ospreys were designed with combat, search and rescue (CSAR) missions in mind, and the tiltrotor was considered a frontrunner early on in the U.S. Air Force’s now-canceled CSAR-X replacement fleet competition.
Osprey cost considerations ultimately ruled the aircraft out of the competition. But now that the Pentagon has ordered a review of the whole CSAR mission mindset and requirements, the Osprey appears to be back in the running for the job, and has plenty of supporters for the role among current and former Pentagon acquisition officials.
When the Pentagon canceled the Air Force CSAR-X acquisition, analysts predicted other services would try to grab the mission for their aircraft, including the Marines, who had tried earlier to wrest CSAR work from the Air Force for its Osprey fleet.
Now that the Osprey is again the target of certain lawmakers, analysts say, Marines will be looking for whatever advantage they can get to keep their aircraft (Aerospace DAILY, June 24, June 29).
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Osprey program it’s this — Don’t bet against the Marines,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group. “They even beat Dick Cheney on this one.” Cheney made several failed attempts to kill the program while serving as defense secretary in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Aboulafia noted that at-sea medevac missions are not the same as CSAR, per se, but they are cousins. It’s that kind of versatility that’s going to make the Osprey even harder to bring down. In the medevac mission, the two Ospreys were returning to the USS Bataan LHD 5 ship June 25 after a routine mission when the pilots were notified of an emergency situation. The aircraft were ordered to return to the ship at maximum speed.
A sailor had sustained head, hip and chest injuries after falling. After landing aboard Bataan, the patient and a team of medical personnel were brought aboard the aircraft and lifted off from Bataan’s flight deck. The aircraft traveled 147 nautical miles in 37 minutes to a regional airport, where an ambulance was used to transfer the sailor to a hospital for further treatment.
Maj. Brett Hart, an assistant operations officer and one of the Osprey pilots — who has had experience in conducting medevacs in other aircraft like the CH-46E Sea Knight — said the biggest difference with using the Osprey was its rapid speed. “By virtue of having this aircraft, we were able to do it much faster and farther,” he said.
Photo: US Navy
