Marine Corps Col. Matt Mulhern, head of the V-22 Osprey program at NAS Patuxent River, Md., told reporters in Washington Wednesday that he expects DOD and Marine Corps leadership to sign off on an overseas deployment for the MV-22 as soon as this fall. However, he said the decision to go ahead remains the call of Commandant Gen. James Conway, who last month sang the aircraft’s praises but was not ready to commit publicly to a date.
The Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit hosted a change of command ceremony recently, another sign of how the CCA concept is maturing and becoming entrenched in the Air Force’s structure, to the point where exercises have generated multiple sorties in a single day to simulate high-tempo combat operations.