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The United States Marine Corps have confirmed that at around 3:00am Australian Eastern Standard Time today, the US Navy and US Marine Corps suspended search and rescue operations for three missing Marines involved in the 5 August MV-22 Osprey incident off the east coast of Australia.

The US has now shifted the focus of their operations to recovery and the Australian Government is supporting the US through the deployment of Australian Defence Force capabilities to the area.

The transition to a US led recovery operation after an extensive search and rescue operation by aircraft and ships comes with the acknowledgement that three Marines are still unaccounted for.

 

We had an update about 1/2 hr ago that the 3 Marines that were missing have killed.

 

My deepest condolences and sympathies to the families. 

 

Semper Fi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tough break indeed.   The only bright side is that apparently the aircraft was filled with troops and aside from the 3 lost, everyone else managed to get out.   No easy feat to egress out of a confining, small aircraft after it crashes into the ocean.  Especially when you are fully kitted up with weapons, packs, etc. Could have been much worse.  

 

Marines continue to experience a very high loss rate.   

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On 8/6/2017 at 7:37 AM, 11bee said:

Tough break indeed.   The only bright side is that apparently the aircraft was filled with troops and aside from the 3 lost, everyone else managed to get out.   No easy feat to egress out of a confining, small aircraft after it crashes into the ocean.  Especially when you are fully kitted up with weapons, packs, etc. Could have been much worse.

 

Marines continue to experience a very high loss rate.   

 

That's why they train for a water landing.

 

Define a very high loss rate?

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28 minutes ago, Tank said:

 

That's why they train for a water landing.

 

Define a very high loss rate?

Don't have time to google but I've seen plenty of articles out there discussing the current state of Marine aviation. It seems they have some issues.  Not just with the MV-22 but fleet wide.  I'll try to look later.  

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Just by its very nature the MV-22 is a more difficult aircraft to fly than either a jet or a helicopter - making it potentially less safe.  It doesn't glide like a conventional plane and and cannot auto rotate the same way a helicopter would in the event of a catastrophic engine failure.  It is less forgiving to land than a helicopter.  The Osprey's operational advantages - range and speed - are somewhat offset by its tactical disadvantages, specifically getting into an out of an LZ as quickly as a helicopter would.  Then there is the cost of the program.  

 

Richard Whittle does a good job of examining the V-22 in his book Dream Machine. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Notorious-17-May-2011-Paperback/dp/B011T7TYOK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502145465&sr=8-2&keywords=whittle+V-22

 

 

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Looked in Google to see what was out there about the crash. These caught my interest.

Quote

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/08/06/national/three-american-troops-missing-u-s-osprey-ditches-off-australia/

Tokyo asks Washington to halt Osprey flights in Japan after crash off Australia

by Jesse Johnson Staff Writer Aug 6, 2017

Tokyo on Sunday asked Washington to halt Osprey flights in Japan after the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps called off search and rescue operations for three marines who disappeared after an MV-22 crashed off Australia’s east coast a day earlier.

...

In the wake of the crash, new Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Sunday that Tokyo had asked Washington to refrain from flying the controversial MV-22 in Japan. He did not offer further details, including a time frame for the suspension.

 

 

 

Quote

 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/us-marine-corps-v22-osprey-found-hunt-for-missing-men/news-story/5f8bb1d607ba710eb1e84fc11aacf9c0?nk=db0a64e83925766cae585ed8f1f5998e-1502148707

US Marine Corps V-22 Osprey found, hunt for missing men

Rory Callinan The Australian

12:00AM August 8, 2017

A military source confirmed the discovery but said if the wreck was at more than 50m, divers might struggle to reach it and a submersible might be needed. Marine divers are said to be keen to recover the bodies of their comrades.

...

Recovery of aircraft in deep water can be difficult, dangerous and costly, but Australia has some ­recent experience in such operations.

In 2007 the ADF spent ­about $9.2 million to ­find and recover the body of an Australian Special Air Service Regiment trooper Corporal Joshua Porter, and the fuselage of a Black Hawk helicopter that he was flying in when it crashed off Fiji.

The aircraft and Porter’s body were recovered at a depth of 3000m after using a specialist deep-diving remotely operated vehicle to locate the aircraft and then use rigging equipment and lifting lines to raise it to the ­surface.

 

 

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11 hours ago, southwestforests said:

Looked in Google to see what was out there about the crash. These caught my interest.

 

 

 

The Japanese are looking to remove the Marines from Oki and any incident will be used for that purpose, right or wrong.

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15 hours ago, 11bee said:

Don't have time to google but I've seen plenty of articles out there discussing the current state of Marine aviation. It seems they have some issues.  Not just with the MV-22 but fleet wide.  I'll try to look later.  

 

Saw some articles but it doesn't appear that bad, slightly above with 9 now, 8 was the trend the last few years. That is pretty good when you look at the total number of flights. Almost anything to do with the military is a dangerous, especially training. DOD run about 1,000 members lost a year to non-combat deaths.  

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54 minutes ago, Tank said:

 

Saw some articles but it doesn't appear that bad, slightly above with 9 now, 8 was the trend the last few years. That is pretty good when you look at the total number of flights. Almost anything to do with the military is a dangerous, especially training. DOD run about 1,000 members lost a year to non-combat deaths.  

 

Agreed that military aviation is dangerous.  Always has been, always will be.   However, given the last few years, not sure how you can call the Marine's safety record "pretty good".  

 

Here is one article but there are lots out there, including many by active duty Marines who say the force is in crisis. 

 

http://taskandpurpose.com/marine-plane-crash-data/

 

With regard to Japan, are we still flying Osprey's over there or did we ground them as requested?

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On 8/7/2017 at 4:45 PM, B2Blain said:

Just by its very nature the MV-22 is a more difficult aircraft to fly than either a jet or a helicopter - making it potentially less safe.  It doesn't glide like a conventional plane and and cannot auto rotate the same way a helicopter would in the event of a catastrophic engine failure.  It is less forgiving to land than a helicopter.  The Osprey's operational advantages - range and speed - are somewhat offset by its tactical disadvantages, specifically getting into an out of an LZ as quickly as a helicopter would.  Then there is the cost of the program.  

 

Richard Whittle does a good job of examining the V-22 in his book Dream Machine. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Notorious-17-May-2011-Paperback/dp/B011T7TYOK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502145465&sr=8-2&keywords=whittle+V-22

 

 

From the same Author:

 

 

Quote

 

Compare the record of conventional helicopter safety with the Osprey. Since Oct. 1, 2001, the military has lost 405 helicopters worldwide at a cost of 583 American lives, and less than one third of those were brought down by enemy fire. Those figures include the 30 U.S. troops killed Aug. 6 when Taliban insurgents apparently shot down a CH-47 Chinook transport with a rocket-propelled grenade. The statistics also include 20 other American deaths since 2001 in six losses of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters — the primary aircraft the Marines are buying the Osprey to replace.

 

The redesigned, retested Osprey’s safety record is so good that it’s actually the safest rotorcraft the Marine Corps flies, based on Class A mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. Those are official Naval Safety Center statistics.

Given that record, anyone who calls the Osprey “unsafe” or “accident-prone” these days either hasn’t bothered to learn the facts or is willfully ignoring them.d

One reason for the Osprey’s great safety record is that while the Marines and Air Force have flown their V-22s for roughly 20,000 combat hours since 2007, not one has been shot down, though some in Afghanistan have been hit by 7.62mm rounds, the type fired by AK-47s, and they all returned to base safely. Why things don’t happen is often impossible to prove, but one probable reason for this is that it may be harder to hit a V-22 than a helicopter with the sort of weapons at the Taliban’s disposal. The Osprey takes off and lands much the same way as a helicopter but can get out of small arms range quickly when leaving a landing zone by converting to airplane flight and climbing. Marine Ospreys also spend most of their time in the air at 8,000 feet or more, well above most threats. Helicopters generally fly low in combat zones because they’re slower, and hugging the ground makes it harder for the enemy to see them in time to shoot at them. Unlike flying above 8,000 feet, though, flying low doesn’t make it impossible to get hit by small arms.

 

The Osprey’s capabilities are saving lives in combat in other ways, too. Just ask the F-15E pilot who was picked up by an Osprey in Libya last March after bailing out of his aircraft. Two Marine V-22s sent from the USS Kearsarge covered the 150 or so miles between him and the ship in about 45 minutes and got him to safety before dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s forces could find him.

 

The only valid reason to oppose the Osprey these days might be cost, but many of the V-22’s critics have trouble keeping up with the facts on this point, too.

“The V-22 Osprey helicopter has been long hampered by cost overruns,” the liberalish Center for American Progress declared in early July, repeating history as if it were current news. True, the Osprey suffered plenty of cost overruns when it was still an ugly duckling, and it cost a lot to correct its original inadequacies. But since 2008, when the Naval Air Systems Command signed a five-year contract with co-manufacturers Bell Helicopter and Boeing, the program has actually enjoyed substantial cost underruns — savings Bell and Boeing project will amount to around $200 million over the life of the $10.9 billion deal, according to a senior official who’s been briefed on the figures. Costs have come down because Bell and Boeing have learned how to make the aircraft more quickly, and thus cheaper, and NAVAIR has subjected the Osprey to a stringent cost reduction campaign.

On Aug. 4, Bell-Boeing gave the government a proposal for a second five-year contract to produce the last 122 Ospreys needed to give the Marines and Air Force the 410 those two services plan to buy between them. The price the companies offered is secret and subject to negotiation, but by law, the government can’t sign such deals unless they offer “substantial savings” over a series of single-year contracts for the same period. By informal congressional fiat, “substantial savings” means at least 10 percent.

 

As the Marines, the Air Force, NAVAIR and Bell-Boeing gain more experience with the 21st Century Osprey, its operating expense is also coming down. Over the past year, its cost per flight hour declined from more than $11,000 an hour to about $9,500, according to Marine Col. Greg Masiello, the program manager at NAVAIR.

 

At this year’s Paris Air Show, Masiello also unveiled an analysis showing that because of the Osprey’s greater speed, which means greater range, it can be a far cheaper way to transport troops in a war zone than a utility helicopter, such as the Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk, the alternative critics often advocate. According to this analysis, to carry a company of troops requires either four Ospreys or sixteen helicopters. The Ospreys could deliver those troops 250 nautical miles in one hop, but the helicopters would have to stop at a Forward Arming and Refueling Point, or FARP, which requires more people to operate and guard the facility and to deliver fuel to it via ground convoys. Add up all the expenses avoided by using four Ospreys instead of 16 helicopters and the savings are about $224 million, Masiello said.

 

Another internal Marine Corps analysis done last year that employs a measure of efficiency favored by civilian airlines – cost per seat mile, meaning cost per flight hour per passenger per mile – found that the Osprey’s speed and range make it much cheaper on that basis than Marine Corps and Navy helicopters. Using the Osprey’s fiscal 2010 flight hour cost of $11,651 per flight hour, this study pegged the 24-passenger V-22’s cost per seat mile at $1.76 compared to $2.84 for the Navy’s seven-passenger MH-60S Black Hawk, $3.17 for the 12-passenger CH-46 Sea Knight, and $3.12 for the 24-passenger CH-53E Super Stallion.

Against that background, foreign interest in buying Ospreys, which evaporated after the crashes of 2000, is warming up. Israel recently showed serious interest by sending a team of experts to New River Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina to spend some time kicking the tires and flying the Osprey. Bell-Boeing says as many as a dozen nations may end up buying V-22s. This suggests that those who take the time to learn the latest facts about the Osprey are impressed. And that’s no fairy tale.


 

 

http://breakingdefense.com/2011/08/the-v-22-safer-than-helos-effective-worth-buying/

 

 

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I mentioned Whittle - not because he is a critic of the V-22 but because he is a supporter that gives an honest examination of painful development history of the aircraft.  

 

I don't think anything that I said was controversial.  Like the AV-8A it suffers from being the first generation of its type.  It cannot be flown as aggressively as a helicopter and in some cases maybe a liability getting into and out of an LZ.  Even after years of development and operational testing the Marines are modifying flight procedures - limiting how it can be flown - which happened after the fatal crash in Hawaii.

 

There is a clear trade off - range and speed for limitations getting into and out of an LZ.  You could argue that the range of the Osprey increases the number of potential LZs.  But there are going to be situations when the MV-22 will be more vulnerable than a helicopter to being shot down from enemy fire.

 

 

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14 hours ago, B2Blain said:

I mentioned Whittle - not because he is a critic of the V-22 but because he is a supporter that gives an honest examination of painful development history of the aircraft.  

 

I don't think anything that I said was controversial.  Like the AV-8A it suffers from being the first generation of its type.  It cannot be flown as aggressively as a helicopter and in some cases maybe a liability getting into and out of an LZ.  Even after years of development and operational testing the Marines are modifying flight procedures - limiting how it can be flown - which happened after the fatal crash in Hawaii.

 

There is a clear trade off - range and speed for limitations getting into and out of an LZ.  You could argue that the range of the Osprey increases the number of potential LZs.  But there are going to be situations when the MV-22 will be more vulnerable than a helicopter to being shot down from enemy fire.

 

 

 

 

Wasn't trying to "counter" any "controversy" simply putting up what the author had written elsewhere. 

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