• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

All things MV-22 Osprey

heyjoe said:
LOL, you've been living in the NAE for some time now. It's the triad headed by CNAF and anchored by N88 on the right side of the base and NAVAIR on the left side of the base. Sound like a business? Well, it is being run with "enterprise" business practices and other warfare communties are adopting it by direction of CNO.

NAElogo_86x86.gif
Click to expand...

NAE = The "they" we all refer to.
 
Re: the Fox News clip posted by Scoober---Col Walters is an old CO of mine and a great man. Unusual for Fox, the interviewer gave short shrift to the military spokesman and more time for the defense critic to answer. Bluto did fine, but he really needed more time than a 5 min segment to explain his points.

Here's a link to the Time article cited in the Fox News clip:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1665835-1,00.html

The article spends a huge amount of time on autos and a little on the gun. At least they've run out of mileage on vortex ring state.

Apparently even some prominent Marines have a tenuous grip on reality.
Former Commandant Gen Jones: '"I just fundamentally believe than an assault aircraft that goes into hot landing zones should have a nose-mounted gun," Jones told TIME. "I go back to my roots a little bit," the Vietnam veteran says.' What Vietnam-era, or any assault-support aircraft, did you fly in with forward-firing ordnance? DAS-pod Hueys don't count.

Anyway, my other conclusion from the article is that Ward Carroll, former Bell-Boeing PR flack and "Punk's War" author, is willing to spout off gratuitously in order to stay in the news--gee, one day get paid to sell the V-22, the next day a public critic... being a PR media whore doesn't make one an Osprey expert, just a whore.

Edit: I've been corrected. Ward Carroll was a government flack, not a Bell-Boeing flack. My apologies to the great folks at Bell-Boeing.
 
I just got the Time article from Barnes and Noble (was getting Tony Dungy's book) and finished reading it... don't know what to say.. bunch of haters. I was suprised at how much it costs.. close to $120m... thats like 2 G-5's.. isn't the F-22 around $140m?
 
WVUBetaHornet said:
Yeah just about... ~137.7-138 million, quite a pricey bird! :D
I believe the whole Raptor program ran about 62 billion. (so far)
Click to expand...

So one 22 costs just a little more than the other, and in the time article Ward Carroll says that he expects to lose 5% of aircraft during the first 3 years
 
whitesoxnation said:
I just got the Time article from Barnes and Noble (was getting Tony Dungy's book) and finished reading it... don't know what to say.. bunch of haters. I was suprised at how much it costs.. close to $120m... thats like 2 G-5's.. isn't the F-22 around $140m?
Click to expand...

They're using numbers to spin it their way. Here's the no fooling procurement costs for last, this and next year's procurement. Numbers are always higher per aircraft as it is ramped up to full rate production. Notice how 2008 cost is substantially less.
FY2006 FY2007 FY2008
V-22 (MEDIUM LIFT) 12 (1,245.2) 14 (1,427.0) 21 (1,847.9)

Notice unit cost barely breaks $100M and in 2008, it's closer to $90M.

As to F-22, its FY2007 flyaway weapons system cost is $171.8M each.
 
whitesoxnation said:
I was suprised at how much it costs.. close to $120m... thats like 2 G-5's.. isn't the F-22 around $140m?
Click to expand...

I'd be surprised at the too, because that's a grossly exaggerated cost. That's likely the program total cost divided by the number of aircraft on contract. Every sim, every engineering study, every roll of toilet paper used at Bell Boeing since 1985 divided by # of Ospreys. That's like adding the cost of your driveway into the cost of your car. The "flyaway cost," i.e. the amount the government actually pays for each completed airframe has been going down consistently. It's eventually going to hit the 50M range.

Usually when you see obscene numbers for cost of weapons systems, some dubious accounting has gone on. I suppose you could make a case for the bigger numbers, if development and infrastructure were completely unique to that project. Usually, though, a good proportion of development money will aid other projects in some way.
 
whitesoxnation said:
So one 22 costs just a little more than the other, and in the time article Ward Carroll says that he expects to lose 5% of aircraft during the first 3 years
Click to expand...

That's complete supposition, i.e. "pulling a number out his ass." There's no quantitative reason for him to say five percent, other than that it's big enough to sound scary and small enough to not sound completely ridiculous and make him lose all credibility if none or one crashes, as will probably be the case.
 
phrogdriver said:
That's complete supposition, i.e. "pulling a number out his ass." There's no quantitative reason for him to say five percent, other than that it's big enough to sound scary and small enough to not sound completely ridiculous and make him lose all credibility if none or one crashes, as will probably be the case.
Click to expand...

Maybe, maybe not. Every program uses an attrition number x expected service life x force structure when it plans its procurement profile. Otherwise, procurement would end and units could run out of airframes before projected service life is ended. That's why you see airframes sometimes going to desert as attrition reserve. If an airframe does better than its expected attrition rate, it's a tough call whether to reduce production. That happened with T-45 because mishap rate was lower than attrition rate so there was annual lobbying by Boeing to still buy them (you can bet they counted on the revenue).
 
phrogdriver said:
Anyway, my other conclusion from the article is that Ward Carroll, former Bell-Boeing PR flack and "Punk's War" author, is willing to spout off gratuitously in order to stay in the news--gee, one day get paid to sell the V-22, the next day a public critic... being a PR media whore doesn't make one an Osprey expert, just a whore.

Edit: I've been corrected. Ward Carroll was a government flack, not a Bell-Boeing flack. My apologies to the great folks at Bell-Boeing.
Click to expand...

Before you go off on Ward, you should hear his side of the story. he was very disturbed to find his interview taken out of context as he is NOT a critic, he is a supporter (he also is now "Media" so describing him as a "media whore" means you haven't done your homework). Ward doesn't deserve this type of accusation. Here's his retort to the article (reprinted with written permission):

The Sunday Paper

This week's cover article in Time magazine is about the V-22. The title of the article - "A Flying Shame" - gives you a pretty good indication of writer Mark Thompson's thesis.

I was contacted by Thompson in late August. During our half hour conversation I offered pretty much the same thoughts I put out here some months ago regarding the Osprey's warfighting potential, including my belief that the airplane really could "change everything" in terms of how the Marine Corps fights.

Well, Thompson left out the part where I indicated my support and hopes for VMM-263's success and resultantly I am presented as a "critic."

Serves me right, I guess. I dealt with this type of reporter for three years in support of the program and was often frustrated by what they left out of the final product. That's what I get for attempting a complete thought with a reporter who's reverse engineering a story. I should have used my "risk communications" training during this conversation.

As I've written here before, Godspeed to the "Thunder Chickens" and all who work in support of the V-22 around the fleet. I hope to be proved wrong with my (now well circulated) concerns, including the mishap rate. In fact, I'm planning on it.

Here's a video of Colonel "Bluto" Walters, USMC - former CO of VMX-22 - addressing Thompson's points on Fox News.

As always, we'll be keeping DT readers up on what's happening - both good and bad - with this crucial first deployment.

-- Ward

(Online version of this post at http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003759.html.)


_______________________

Ward Carroll

Editor, www.Military.com
 
If he's a supporter, he's pretty tepid, like a guy saying, "Sure, you could be prom queen, if you lost 50 lbs, got breast enlargements, did something about your complexion, and had any friends." He's made the 5% attrition statement before and made engineering conclusions about the ICDS that to my knowledge he's not qualified to make on (as I remember the pub) Defense Weekly. I remember a thread (been searching for it, but the Military.com forums are HUGE) where he engaged Buddy (those who know him, know) pretty hard on Military.com forums. Buddy gave him back just as good. Didn't seem like much of a supporter to me.

Edit: it wasn't military.com http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003365.html

I may have been somewhat over-the-top by calling Ward a "media whore," but someone who goes from official advocate to critic rubs me wrong. If he was so concerned about it while he worked for the program, he should have resigned before OT II E.
 
Question for you Osprey drivers out there.

Why don't you guys fly IMC? Is it the lack of anti-ice/de-ice on the plane or is she just not outfitted for flying in the goo?

Is cold weather a problem for the bird? We worked up some diverts to iceland for an Atlantic crossing and there was all sorts of drama.

What do you have for oxygen in case you had to AR above 10k?

Is there anything in your NATOPS that talks about max rec. sea state for survivability when you put it in the drink? I seem to recall the 53's was like 10 feet, but I think that was due to roll over or something.

Can you buddy rescue with a winch from another Osprey when one goes down in the water?

You guys ever think about deploying with PJ's across the pond? I've used them many times on moving 53's E/D from Oki to Thailand over the landbridge "fish hook". I've used them for space shuttle recovery ops too. They always gave me a warm fuzzy. They are almost as fun as Herk guys on libo too.

Anyone help me out? Don't make me call your squadrons and play stump the chump :)
 
Ospreys fly IMC all the time. The fact the you don't know this makes the rest of your questions very suspect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top