USMC: GAO V-22 Report Misses The Mark
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By Bettina H. Chavanne
A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report detailing the V-22 Osprey’s shortcomings in reliability and maintainability “misses the mark,” according to Lt. Gen. George Trautman, U.S. Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation.
“The Osprey’s performance in Iraq over the previous 18 months proved to us, and more importantly, to those 45,000 Marines…who flew in the aircraft that it is safer, faster and can range distances farther than any helicopter,” Trautman says.
He was grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on June 23 over a recent GAO report that described, “challenges to operational effectiveness [during the Iraq deployments] that raise questions about whether the MV-22 is best suited to accomplish the full repertoire of missions of the helicopters it is intended to replace.”
Trautman disagreed, citing the aircraft’s speed, range and “higher flight profile” as advantages over the helicopters it will replace. The V-22 is “tailor-made” for Afghanistan, he added. “Heat and high elevations have an effect on all rotorcraft,” he said. “But we know that even with those considerations, the Osprey is far more capable than the aircraft it replaces.”
The V-22 has suffered numerous critiques in the past, most of which Trautman has acknowledged, including problems with the engines and low mission capable rates. “We have continuously tracked several key components which have been maintenance degraders,” Trautman said, “and we are moving in the right direction with our industry partners to get solutions fielded expeditiously.” As to whether the GAO report revealed anything to either the Marines or Congress that departed from past complaints, Trautman replied unequivocally, “No, we did not learn anything new from the GAO report.”
Photo: USAF
