I am not giving anything away since Rumsfeld announced it this afternoon.

But whichever MEU/SOC is abord [i]Bataan[/i] is now on its way to Arabian Gulf off of Pakistan

Because of their special ops capability I do expect them to be used on raids against Afganistan.

Now does anyone have tabs on where the Ospreys are, cause if thy are going to use Super Stallions for this they are looking at a 12hr helo ride just to get to Kandahar.

Thanks to that jerk Cheney they dont have Ospreys yet which could easily move about Afganistan.

Ataboy, give um hell HiramRanger

He cancelled the program in 1990 as Sec. of Defense. This has caused a 7 year delay. They were supposed to have IOC in 1997, now we are looking at 2004 unless this war causes a major speed up. It also rased the per unit cost by 20%
That was dumb. He put himself above the Marines who desperately wanted this aircraft.

He is good at use, but he dont understand hardware aquision worth a damn.

Why dont YOU all, especially YOU HiramRanger, stop with the knee jerk reactions if you DONT know the whole story.  Cheany isnt perfect, not by a long shot.  Since this administration has now allowed the first production batch of Ospreys to go ahead, it appears he has realised his error, or at least has made peace with it and not gotten involved (not required as VP).

The Osprey was designed with the lessons of the failed 1980 Irainian Hostage Rescue Mission in mind.  Unlike a helicopter it can fly very long distances over occupied terrain, in a resonable amount of time- like a single night- so you dont have to land in the middle of enemy held territory and try to hide helicopters over during the day like we attempted in that rescue mission.

When we sent cruse missiles after binLadens camps in 1998, the original plan was for SPECOPS to raid the sites immediately afterward to make sure they hit something and gather intel. That was cancelled when Pakistan wouldnt let us fly over. While the men could have been paradropped easily enough, it was a 10 hour round trip for the Super Stallions who would have to pick them up. It would have also required inflight refueling for the Stallions. So much for OpSec. Because of the risks involved with the timing of the entry and pickup, and Clintons No Risks policy, it was dropped in the planning stages.

With Ospreys sending a raiding party in is no different then sending them in by C130, except now the same aircraft can also pick UP the raiders.  Nothing else can do that.  It is made to order for the kind of ops we are contemplating now.  And it was a great mistake to have delayed its production this long.

No its not in true massed production now, but that can be fixed. No aircraft really NEEDS a 13 year development program. Untill the recent accidents ALL of the delays in the program have been imposed from outside by people who slashed the prgrams funds so it could go much faster.

You know, I don't think every decision I've made in my life has been the correct one at the time.  I guess that makes me a jerk too!

We are very fortunate to have a man with the experience of VP Cheney in office right now.

I was just wondering how comfortable I'd feel with Lieberman as VP right now???

Cheney, is good with people, dont understand machinery, in his present job that is quite alright. He made many mistakes in acquisition during his turn as SD and they are hurting us now, the A-12 Avenger II was another. I am not sure, you would have to ask him, but he might even admit it.

And it was nothing about "predicting", as I said, the Osprey proposal was chosen by the USMC based on lessons from 1980. Situations like this were faced more than once by the Regan and Bush administrations.  The need was recognized by at least some people. Now these programs were cut before the Gulf War in 90, in a attempt to cut the budget and try to keep Bush from having to reverse his no tax increase pledge. The Soviet Union was already collapsing, he should of cut out Trident Subs and B-2s that are now sitting around idle. This WAS suggested then, people COULD see this coming.  Stop with the hero worship.

Wow, some of you guys have VERY thin skins about this?  Perhaps some of you saw this coming?

No, perhaps some of us understand the meaning of loyalty.

A hard concept for some.

Osprey, refuels in flight. At a normal altitude. Fast enough it can tank from KC-10s not just KC130's. You can use all of the Super Stallions cargo capacity as fuel if you want- it just makes it slower. It will stay up 24 hours, but it still cruses at 125 not 225. That was the problem in Iran. They could not make it to Tehran in the hours of darkness, and at the time they couldnt refuel in flight. The latter has been fixed. But there is noting you can do about the former. A helicopter is a helicopter.
1250 mi round trip to Kabul is still 10hr in a Stallion, 5 in a Osprey.

Since the Ospreys arent available in large numbers (but dont be suprised if we DO use the pre-production examples in this, 9 of them are fullly equipped) Stallions ARE going to be doing the vast majority of the work, no one in their right mind would try this with a Sea Knight. Their are going to be problems.  At the very least with our intended targets getting pleanty of warning and running away.

Please I have been looking for work.  I would LOVE to work there, and have all the intel they get. Right now I cant even afford my own subscription to Janes.  Much less a chance to actually talk to some of the people that actually run these programs so I can pick their brain as to why and how they do things.

I take it that Vietnam so affected you that ANY criticism of government policy- even PAST government policy- gives you flashbacks.  MUST- CRUSH- ALL- QUESTIONS- AT- ONCE.

You are only happy when everyone mindlessy follows the leader- even right over the cliff- arent you Hiram?

It had to do with where the KC-130's had to come from- they couldnt fly from carriers and they couldnt come from pakistan.
And a Stallion cannot refuel from a KC-10

From [url]http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw001212_3_n.shtml[/url]



Now the Super Stallion, from [url]http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/h-53.htm[/url]

I worked on the design of the Osprey with Bell/Textron and Boeing Vertol a few years ago.  I would dearly love to see the platform used operationally.  And except for extreme circumstances I don't feel it's ready.  And Amarillo hasn't built enough yet to make any significant difference.

Sad to hear that[:(!]

You sure we cant use the few we got built. I know we dont have enough to use on all missions (not by a long shot), but just [i]some[/i]of them.

But now if this war does last years as Bush is warning, how long would it take to ramp up production if they worked 24/7, price is no object? Could we have a squadron in a year instead of three like currently plan?

Range is whatever you want it to be with Super Stallions. The Sea Dragon versions have flown 24hrs before by carrying two crews. They have 32,000 pounds of cargo capacity and can easily trade it for fuel. It was the speed and altitude limitations of the Stallions that was the stumbling block. The Stallions would have been crossing the coast and leaving the country in daylight. My calulations with a compass show that it should have been only a 10hr flight even by Stallion but everything I have heard said they were figuring 12hr, I guess they had some reason to plan a LONG low altitude or NOE insertion or dogleg route once inside Afganistan. This also ran up fuel consumption. They were caught with the option of having KC130's try to accompany the Stallions IN bound and top them off before then made their run in. Or have the KC-130s try to pick up the Stallions on the outbound leg- with the possibility they would have to refuel over Pakistan or Iran in daylight. And the only place the KC's could stage from was Oman, meaning a fairly long flight for them just to get to the refueling point.

Ospreys are fast enough, and can fly high enough, to be safely fueled by KC-10 or even the little KA-6B Intruder (that wouldnt be much fuel though). They can match speed with a KC 130 if they have to. In the case of the 98 mission they could have completed the trip, and the raid in 5hrs flight time. Even if they were delayed as much as a hour by ground action, there would be enough time that the KC-130's could have flown in across the beach to fuel them safely in the dark.

My [i]Ships and aircraft of the US Fleet[/i] quotes a [i]RADIUS[/i] of action of 410nm with 6000 pound internal load- that is more than the weight of 20 Force Recon Marines and their equipment. And 220nm with 10,000 pounds internal load. Which would be a XM777 LW 155mm its crew and a few rounds of ammo.  

HiramRanger,

 ArmdLbrl was being kind to VP Cheney in the area of military aviation.  

 Anybody with half a brain believe that F/A-18 E/F is better, cheaper or anything else than Tomcat 21?  What are we going to do about SEAD/DEAD/EW?  New Intruders?  The F/A-18G is going to be a much better platform.  The man played politics to spend far more money for less capable platforms that aren’t available.  Let’s kill Grumman to play politics and prove something, doesn’t matter that we’re going to kill more of out own because of it.

 The Osprey getting far more power out of it’s engines than originally planned still went with Ti 6,000 psi hydraulic system when it no longer needed it.  Using composites in an "assault" helo, good for initial battle damage survivability but repairability while deployed?  F/A-18 E/F/G having wing problems and buying the 1st 150 with old avionics/weapons systems.  All the problems with the C-130J.  What do all these have in common?  F**ked up acquisition process set in by our current VP.  

 As far as Maxwell they do have a good Mongolian BBQ.

All,

 I was going to add specifics on stated range (with and w/o A/R), profile, etc. but decided against it.  Lots of the numbers are derived from either manufacturers or testing data.  The manufacturer of a weapons system obviously wants it in the best light, the "book" numbers are derived from a specific testing criteria.  Rarely to the operational numbers match the test data.  Sometimes the operators can get better performance by changing something to do with employment.  

What's so fucking great about these Ospreys ???

All I ever hear about them is how often they crash...

Ohh, I like mongolian BBQ,[:)]

[size=2]... I agree, Dick Cheney is an enormous asset to this administration. His hesitation on the V-22 Osprey was warranted.
I know first hand that there are problems with this fine machines' systems but the ONLY way to fix them is to slow production.
Nothing motivates a defense contractor more then to suggest a delay in their return on investment of their IRAD monies poured into these new aircraft/systems.[/size=2]

Yep that is the Sikorsky propaganda machine at work.
Ospreys can take off and land like a helicopter. Inbetween it is a turboprop. I already posted the performance above, compare that to any helo you choose, for THIS kind of operation. No other aircraft can do a 1250mi round trip in 5hrs and both land and recover troops at the target without a airfield.

Let me simplify it. Ospreys- if we had enough of them fully equipped- could fly from international waters in the Arabian Sea, reach Kabul, hover over the talibans HQ building, rapell troops on to its roof, circle for half a hour, come back, pick them up with a Jacobs ladder off the tail ramp, fly off at 300mph back to the Arabian Sea. Complete it all in 5-51/2 hours, thus keeping everything safely under the cover of darkness. That is what a Osprey could do, anywhere in Afganistan.  We become the Viet Cong and the sky becomes our Cambodia.

Now if we were back in the Fulda Gap the Blackhawk would win hands down because flying a Osprey as a helo 50 feet off the ground between trees and beneath the power lines is a good way to die. Nearly 70ft wide with rotors turning it is a clumsy heilo. Which is why the Army doesnt use them, and that is fine for places like North Korea. Fine for fighting a conventional army with heavy AA defenses.

The Osprey is not a combat aircraft.  It is a gismo.  It is like taking the space shuttle into combat only the space shuttle is technically a big glider and the V-22 is two Stallions attached at the hip with systems times two.  Planerench out.

Tex

If you are talking about the Stallions they already know. The Stallion is Isreals standard heavy lift hilo, becaus it is also one of the highest performance helicoptors in the world it is also used for spec ops insertions.  I would venture to say that it is teh standard method of insertion/recover for long range spec ops missions. They already know EVERYTHING about it.

And if you were talking about Osprey- Thanks for the vote of confidence! But with only 9 pre production models in existance- although if Bush is right about the length of this war, perhaps by this time next year?

If they acted now to give the Osprey program a unlimited budget- which means ulimitef fuel, unlimted flying hours, it could be debugged VERY quickly. The plane needs to be fly to have its problems uncovered and fixed- how can they do that when they have to ration flying hours, and have a shortage of spare parts? That is the situation today.

In 1944, when we sent the first Sikorsky R-4's were sent to Burma, helicopters were considered by many to be a gismo and not a combat aircraft. Now look at today. They were wrong.

And any VTOL that can carry 20 troops that far and get them back HAS to be developed to the full. If we had Ospreys in service NOW- which we should of had- it wouldnt matter if Pakistan gave us clearance or not to get into Afganistan.  Just because you dont understand how it works, doesnt mean its bad Planewrench.

TEXN,

 There’s enough dis-information on the spec’s, employment, etc. that it almost rises to the level of maskirovkaJ.  Let them sort out the wheat from the chaff.  

 I think the whole point is that the Osprey could have been a fielded platform at this time for less than was spent on "development" thus far.  

 Winston_Wolf,

 Different perspective on the same problem.  Basically an acquisition program problem.  Known problems but the design is "fixed" to a certain extent too early in the cycle.  The new E/F Hornet needs a new wing and everybody knows it but to change it exceeds the 40% rule and thus opens to bidding on all new platforms, thus spending even more money.  The avionics have to have a certain amount of commonality even though better ones are available now, again the 40% rule.  Changing the Osprey hydraulic system would cost too much.  Better, faster cheaper, etc. cutting flt tests on Osprey and ignoring the concerns of the fixed wing aviators brought into the program, whose concerns have been verified in blood and near mishaps.

 The Osprey is a good concept.  Like all new concepts there will be teething problems, design, engineering and employment, during implementation.  The cost of these teething problems will be both coin of the realm and blood.