Prior to its first deployment (currently underway), there was much hand wringing in the defense community as to whether or not the MV-22 Osprey would be worth it’s weight in blood. After a long, tragic history of crashing and burning, DAILY STANDARD regular Christian Lowe is reporting that Marines just don’t like the Osprey . . . they love it.
I’m putting together a longer story about my day and interviews I had with crew, maintainers and commanders with the squadron, but here are my preliminary impressions. You ride one, you’ll never want to go back to anything else. Period. It just so happened that my flight from Fallujah to al Asad was on an Osprey. I was jammed in there with about ten other pax, their gear and a box full of supplies they call “tri-walls” for their three-ply cardboard construction. The guy next to me was a SEAL who’s working here training Iraqi army troops. It was his first time on an Osprey. Shouting over the engine noise, I asked him what he thought. He beamed a huge smile and gave a hardy thumbs up. Then he told me… “I’ve ridden on CH-53s about five times before…it takes forEVER,” he shouted as we sped across the blackened desert. That three-engined beast is really the only thing comparable in this AO to the Osprey (the Army’s CH-47 is a good comparison too) but the MV-22 blows the Super Stallion out of the water in this medium lift role.
Because the Osprey claimed so many lives in testing, there are some folks who — understandably — will never trust the MV-22. I’m a fan myself, simply because of Osprey’s remarkable speed. In places like Iraq or Afghanistan, where the enemy is scattered over vast areas, the ability to quickly zip in and out of LZs is critical. While there’s no scientific formula here, I suspect that the lives the Osprey will save with the limited exposure granted by rapid infil/exfil time will make up for the lives it took during trials. Or so I hope.
