"The osprey stays on deserted
shores because it fears human beings," says a
passage from Hojoki, one of Japan's most
acclaimed essays written by poet Kamo no Chomei in
1212.
Ironically, 800 years later in
modern Japan, the "osprey" is about to swoop on
densely inhabited areas, striking fear in the
hearts of the local people. Protests over the
planned deployment of the contentious Bell-Boeing
MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft are growing in
Okinawa prefecture and elsewhere in Japan due to
what they say is the aircraft's poor safety record
following a series of accidents overseas.
Local governments and residents are
calling for the cancellation of the basing of
MV-22 Ospreys in their communities on safety
grounds. Okinawans plan
to hold the largest rally yet against the
scheduled deployment of the aircraft at
the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station on August 5.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) is
currently pushing ahead with plans to station the
Ospreys first at the Marine Corps' Iwakuni Air
Station in Yamaguchi prefecture in late July for
trial flights, then deploying them to the Futenma
Air Station later on. This is part of the Marine
Corps' plan to replace its aging 24 CH-46
helicopters with 24 MV-22 Ospreys at Futenma in
coming two years.
The Osprey is the hybrid
of a helicopter and fixed-wing airplane; it is a
fixed-wing plane that climbs and hovers like a
helicopter, while its giant propellers can be
rotated forward and to fly like an airplane. It's
the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) transport
combo-aircraft. The name of the Osprey came from
the bird of prey, which can descend almost
vertically, just like the aircraft. It can carry
out low-altitude flight such as above mountainous
areas, which helps reduce the risk of an aircraft
exposing itself to enemy radar. This in-turn leads
to a greater mission success rate.
The
Pentagon has reiterated that the Osprey is "a
highly capable, reliable and safe aircraft". But
we just saw the second crash of an Osprey in three
months in Florida, raising renewed questions over
its safety
"As an airplane it's quite
safe," Arthur Rex Rivolo, an expert on rotorcraft
who runs an aerospace corporation in Virginia of
the US, said in recent email interviews with Asia
Times Online. "But its helicopter role is always
very precarious. The shortcomings of the V-22 have
to do with the design of the aircraft. The biggest
concern over the aircraft is that it has smaller
rotors. As a helicopter, that is working very hard
to stay in the air."
Rivolo served as the
principal analyst for the MV-22 and CV-22 at the
Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit
organization paid to do independent research for
the Pentagon, from June 1992 to March 2009. He was
a pilot fir six years at the US Air Force and 22
years at the Air National Guard. He testified
before the House of Representatives in June 2009
on the inability of the MV-22 Osprey to safely
autorotate - that is, to conduct an emergency
power-off landing by rotating its propellers with
the help of the wind, even after all engines
become inoperative.
"The aircraft is
unable to autorotate," Rivolo said.
Rivolo
pointed out the chances of the Osprey's two
engines failing in peacetime are very rare, "but
if both engines fail, that would be a very serious
problem of the V-22. The US military has decided
that a very, very small risk is worth the utility
of the aircraft. In a rare occurrence of all
engines' failure, we will lose some people. And
the military thought that's acceptable."
Japanese Defense Minister Morimoto on Monday insisted in the Diet (parliament) that the Osprey has an autorotation function but that the function has not been tested.
History of accidents The V-22
Osprey was once called the "widow-maker" due to a
series of accidents during its development. The
Marine Corps' version, the MV-22, got off to a
rocky start with the deaths of seven marines
during testing in 1992; 23 Marines died in two
crashes of the MV-22 Ospreys in 2000 alone. A US
Air Force version of the tilt-rotor aircraft, the
special mission CV-22, crashed in Afghanistan in
April 2010, killing four people. A total of 36
people have died in V-22s since the plane began
flying.
Two recent V-22 accidents have
again raised safety concerns. An MV-22 crashed in
April in Morocco, killing two marines, and in
June, an Air Force CV-22 Osprey crashed in
Florida, injuring five crewmembers.
Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto
said at a press conference on June 26 that the two
recent crashes occurred during the rotating of its
engine nacelle (engine cover), which is unique to
V-22s. Morimoto said both crashes occurred while
the nacelles were rotating and the aircraft was
converting from vertical to conventional flight.
In the Morocco accident, the pilot was
moving its rotors from an upright to forward
position at the time of the crash. Japanese
defense officials suggested the pilot had tilted
the aircraft forward in a strong tail wind.
The Florida crash occurred while the
rotors were tilted halfway forwards. The pilot was
a veteran with over 2,572 hours of flight
experience, including 554 hours on MV-22s and
CV-22s.
"The Morocco accident is the
classic of [the] V-22," Rivolo said. "The pilot
has a little button on his controls that moves
nacelles. If you move them a little bit too far
forward, you crash. The pilot can crash the
aircraft by touching the switch. This is unique to
the V-22."
Japanese defense chief Morimoto
has continued to stress the safety of the aircraft
by repeatedly saying, "The US military continues
to operate the aircraft despite those incidents.
This suggests there were no systemic problems but
there were some operational problems."
The
Pentagon has stressed that the MV-22 Osprey has an
excellent safety record, and has surpassed 115,000
flight hours. It said about one third of the total
hours were flown during the past two years.
"It's important to remember that the MV-22
has a very good safety record over the past 10
years," an active pilot at the US Air Force told
Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity.
"There has been a lot of focus by the Japanese
media on the recent crashes, but prior to the
April crash, it had been 12 years since an MV-22
had a 'class A' mishap." If the aircraft damage
equals or is greater than $2 million, it is
considered "class A".
"Like other rotary
and fixed-wing aircraft, if the V-22 is flown in
accordance with established regulations and
employed by trained pilots who adjust for
situations using their best judgment, the V-22 is
a safe aircraft."
The Pentagon has also
dismissed the aircraft's safety concerns. It
stressed that including the mishap in April 2012
in Morocco, since the Marine Corps resumed flight
operations in October 2003, the MV-22B has
demonstrated a safety record that is consistently
better than the US Marine Corp (USMC) averages.
The "class A" mishap rate for each of the
identified aircraft is as follows.
These rates
are determined by the number of mishaps over a
period of 100,000 flight hours. The rate of MV-22
Class A mishaps is higher than that of ageing
CH-46, but is the second-lowest among the five
aircraft and lower than the average.
However, the aircraft's record is worse if
class B and C mishaps are included. A class B has
a property damage value of between $500,000 and $2
million, class C is between $50,000 and $500,000.
There were 30 Osprey accidents of all
classes between November 2006 and December 2011,
according to Ryukyu Shimpo, one of the two major
Okinawan newspapers. During the same period, the
CH-46 had 17 accidents, while the CH-53 had 34 and
the AV-8B had 38, the newspaper reported on July
8, citing the USMC's data.
The Wired
website on June 21 said, "The Marines, who tout
the Osprey as their 'safest tactical rotorcraft,'
have used semantic games and fudged statistics to
obscure the V-22's true safety record." It had
reported in October 2011 that the Marines and the
Naval Safety Center didn't count at least four
serious flying accidents as Class A flight
mishaps.
The other safety concern over the
Osprey comes from the fact that the accident rate
of CV-22 stays at 13.47, much more than for the
MV-22. Japanese officials said this is because the
flight hours of all of the 24 CV-22s, which the
Air Force currently holds, stayed at 22,266 hours
as of June 15. Since those flight hours are less
than 100,000, they said the rate is skewed. They
also pointed out that CV-22s are used for special
operations under fiercer conditions, not like
MV-22s.
Wired said, "But the Air Force has
a history of blaming people even when its
warplanes malfunction." For example, Brig Gen
Donald Harvel, the lead investigator on a CV-22
crash in Afghanistan in 2010, was pressured to
blame the pilots as he initially attributed the
incident in part to engine failure.
"There
was absolutely a lot of pressure to change my
report," Air Force Times quoted Harvel as saying
in January 2011. "My heart and brain said it was
not pilot error. I stuck with what I thought was
the truth."
"Harvel said Air Force Special
Operations Command wanted him to cite the cause of
the crash as pilot error because AFSOC didn't want
old doubts stirred up about the safety of the
Osprey program," Air Force Times reported.
The bottom line: the Osprey may be safe as
the Marines have touted, but it sometimes causes
accidents as often happen with every other
aircraft by nature. One fatal crash at Futenma,
which is surrounded by more than 100 schools,
hospitals and shops, could trigger very strong
anti-US sentiment in Okinawa. This could severely
damage the presence of other US bases such as the
Kadena airbase. The US cannot be too careful when
the US deploys the controversial aircraft out
there.
Kosuke Takahashi is a
Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia
Times Online, he also writes for IHS Jane's
Defence Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter
is @TakahashiKosuke
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