NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The head of Air Force Special Operations Command said he has “complete confidence” in the safety of the CV-22 Osprey despite a delayed upgrade to the tiltrotor aircraft’s gearbox following a fatal November 2023 crash that temporarily grounded the fleet.
“I have complete confidence in the aircraft, and I have even more confidence in the crews and maintainers that operate and fix them, so I don’t lose a minute of sleep over that,” Lt. Gen. Michael E. Conley told reporters Sept. 24 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
The V-22, variants of which are operated by the Air Force, Marines, and Navy, has had four fatal crashes that have killed 20 service members since 2022. That has prompted congressional scrutiny as well as lawsuits against the contractors who produce the aircraft. Sixty-five people, military and civilian, have been killed in Osprey crashes over the life of the program.
To fix the aircraft’s issues, the military plans to install new sensors to monitor for failures, improve the quality of steel used in parts of the gearbox, and field a redesigned input quill assembly, an element of the proprotor gearbox that houses the aircraft clutch. The services have also implemented more rigorous training and maintenance for the Osprey.
But the aircraft improvements are around a year behind schedule and will not be fully implemented until 2026.
“The new gearboxes are starting to arrive,” Conley said. “Industry has been a good partner with us on that, and I think we will continue to get the new upgraded gearboxes. … But it takes time, because you’ve got to engineer the things, you’ve got to get the parts, they’ve got to get the supply, the manufacturing piece set up, and it’s just taking longer than you would want, but not unrealistically long.”
The V-22 is a joint venture among the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. It is managed by the Naval Air Systems Command, which has implemented restrictions on V-22 flight operations to reduce mishaps and make emergencies easier to manage following multiple investigations into the aircraft’s issues.
While the airframe is common, the services use the Osprey in vastly different roles. The 51 USAF airframes are used by special operations forces. The Marine Corps uses the Osprey as its primary medium-lift helicopter, while the Navy deploys the aircraft to deliver supplies to aircraft carriers.
“The relationship between the three services is as strong as it’s ever been in the history of the program,” Conley said. “I do think that the V-22 enterprise, I could argue, is in one of the best places that it’s been in its existence and getting better.”
There is also the question of whether the Air Force still needs all its Ospreys, given that its former mission of inserting special ops forces into war zones in the Global War on Terror, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, has shrunk as the U.S. withdrew combat troops.
“We’re training harder. We’re training better,” Conley said, suggesting how the services uses the Osprey may change.
He said AFSOC is moving away from conducting “legacy missions,” such as inserting ground forces to pursue targets in Afghanistan, to more “long-range infiltration and supply” sorties in theaters such as the Pacific.
But the fixes being made to the Osprey have reduced the available inventory. As the U.S. military moved to replace the nacelles, which house the Osprey’s engine and the gearbox, with a simpler unit, the Air Force has been rotating 15 aircraft at a time through storage at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.
“That was a budget decision,” Conley said of the parked Ospreys. He declined to say whether the fleet might shrink in the long term, but said the move has paid off.
“Some of that savings of taking a few off the line was reinvested into our nacelle improvement modifications,” Conley said. “We’ve got 31 of the 51 aircraft that have had the nacelle improvement complete, and we are seeing very tangible positive gains on that—double-digit increases in mission readiness on those tails, and close to double-digit reduction in maintenance man-hours.”
