40 Marine Aircraft Missing
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
V-22 Osprey
The V-22 Osprey has always been something of a problem child for the military. The hybrid part-helicopter-part-airplane suffered through enough development problems back in the 1980s that Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, tried to kill the program, only to watch Congress keep it alive. Since the 1990s, 26 Marines and four civilians have been killed in Osprey crashes.
Now, it’s Congress’ turn to face the music over the V-22, or more precisely the missing 40 Ospreys that the U.S. Marine Corps can’t account for. As of fiscal year 2009, Congress had appropriated enough money for the Marines to have 155 Ospreys. But inventory records indicate the service is missing 40 of the aircraft, and Marine Corps leaders have stonewalled lawmakers and congressional investigators about turning over its complete records on the V-22.
After the Corps refused to provide the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with detailed records, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded in May information on the location, status and readiness of the USMC’s entire fleet of Ospreys. Marine Corps officers refused to comply, claiming the data was classified. This caused the committee to postpone a hearing on the matter, and its chairman threatened to subpoena the records.
To demonstrate just how discombobulated the Corps is over its fleet of Ospreys, the head of Marine Corps Aviation, Lieutenant General George Trautman, was prepared in May to testify that his service had received only 91 Ospreys—even though Trautman had attended a special ceremony only a year earlier celebrating the receipt of the USMC’s 100th V-22.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
40 MV-22s are Missing (by Carlton Meyer, G2mil.com)
GAO Pans V-22 Osprey’s Iraq Tour; Now it’s off to Afghanistan (by Barbara Barrett, McClatchy Newspapers)
Statement of Lt. Gen. George J. Trautman III on United States Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey Program (page 3) (PDF)
Assessments Needed to Address V-22 Aircraft Operational and Cost Concerns to Define Future Investments (Government Accountability Office) (PDF)
Bell Boeing Celebrates 100th V-22 Osprey (Bell Helicopter press release))
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