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Though it was approved for production by the Defense Department in September, the V-22 Osprey aircraft, much of which is to be built by Boeing Co. in Delaware County, has yet to satisfy its many critics.
The latest problems for the aircraft include a Defense Department report that concluded the V-22 was not ready for combat, and an icing incident that forced a precautionary landing.
The Osprey, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a conventional airplane, received a full-production go-ahead from the Defense Department on Sept. 28. But before that, in a 44-page report made public afterward, David Duma, director of Operational Test and Evaluation at the Pentagon, pointed to 16 improvements that should be made to the aircraft before it goes into combat.
Boeing and its V-22 partner, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., say the recommendations will be implemented before the aircraft goes into combat.
The precautionary landing occurred on Oct. 18, when the engines of one V-22 malfunctioned after they ingested pieces of ice during a storm.
Critics of the V-22, which has had numerous setbacks since its development began in 1981, fear more dangerous incidents and say that full production should be delayed by the Defense Department.
"The aircraft continues to have reliability failures, close calls in way of accidents, and hasn't been demonstrated to be ready for combat," said Philip E. Coyle III, who directed weapons tests at the Pentagon from 1994-2001.
Duma's report says lingering questions about the V-22's capability in combat were not adequately answered. He found that little realistic testing was done at night or in severely dusty environments. He expressed concern about its ability to conduct aggressive defensive maneuvers.
"The V-22 is another example of a very expensive weapon system that's headed to the battlefield without adequate testing," said Eric Miller, senior defense investigator with Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington. "It's often costly and less effective to add critical components, like deicing systems and defensive guns, as afterthoughts."
The ruling by the Defense Acquisition Board to proceed with the $50 billion program means at least 458 V-22s will be delivered to the Marines, Air Force and Navy.
Boeing employs 4,700 people in its Delaware County complex where it builds the Osprey's fuselage. Full production is expected to add 500 jobs to Boeing's local operations over the next decade.
But the Oct. 18 incident bolstered one of Duma's chief complaints: that the V-22 is not as reliable as conventional helicopters in emergency landings.
"Emergency landing after the sudden failure of both engines in the... take-off and landing modes below 1,600 feet... are not likely to be survivable," Duma wrote. "The likelihood of sudden, dual-engine failure is remote, but possible."
Supporters of the aircraft generally dismiss the criticism raised by opponents of the program and call the recommendations in Duma's report typical for a weapons-system evaluation.
"In general, rotary-wing aircraft would not transport Marines into a known high-threat zone," said Maj. Susan Idziak, spokeswoman at the Defense Department.
James Darcy, spokesman at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Md., where the V-22 program is based, said it was "entirely normal" for a weapons program to get a list of recommendations to build on.
"Compared to other acquisition programs, this was a glowing report," he said. "If the program has done its job right, the recommendations should closely match the road map that's already in place for follow-on tests and long-term improvements."
Darcy said Duma's recommendations would be incorporated in upgrades by the time the aircraft was deemed combat-ready. The Marines' V-22 is to reach that stage in late 2007, and the Air Force version in 2009.
Miller said his sources in the Navy told him that the V-22 lost power in both engines on Oct. 18, when ice caused them to stall at 18,000 feet. They regained power at 10,000 feet after reaching warmer air. The crew had to make a precautionary landing in Prescott, Ariz.
The Navy ruled the incident a "Class B mishap." Class A is the most severe, resulting in loss of life or more than $1 million in damage.
The Navy disputes Miller's account of what happened.
"The aircraft was never in an out-of-control flight," Darcy said. "The engines never failed. They never stopped running."
Darcy said the V-22 did not have a deicing system because written operating procedures called for avoiding icing conditions whenever possible, and because it was a test aircraft typically used in lower altitudes.
Gordon Adams, author of The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron Triangle, said the Marine Corps, congressional committees and subcommittees with strong military alumni participants, and the defense contractors involved in making the aircraft have formed an impenetrable alliance behind the V-22.
To help counter this, the Project on Government Oversight and congressional critics pushed for independent weapons testers, such as Duma.
In 2001, the Marine Corps began more technical testing, including an overly fast dive called a "vortex ring state," which has caused the V-22 to stall, and is blamed for an April 2000 crash that killed 19 Marines.
"The report is not entirely negative, but even if you had a stronger written report, the program would have proceeded anyway," said Thomas Christie, who retired in February after serving for four years as a presidentially appointed weapons tester. "Once a program is this far along, it's like a snowball going down a hill. You can't stop it."
The military wants the Osprey to launch assaults so far from the coastline that enemy troops cannot respond with defensive fire. That strategy is called "Operational Maneuver From the Sea."
"The No. 1 factor is that the Marines are going to reinvent themselves around the capabilities of this machine," Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group, a Washington consulting firm, said. "They have no backup plan."
The Osprey has been in limited production of 11 per year since 1999. Boeing ships the fuselages from Ridley Township to Textron's plant in Amarillo, Texas, where the wings are attached and engines installed.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.), whose district includes Boeing's Ridley Township plant, said the Oct. 18 incident should be viewed in context.
"Every major new program that we've built has had accidents," said Weldon, who also serves as vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee that oversees the V-22 program. "When you push the envelope with technology, that's unfortunately what happens."
There is speculation among weapons experts, like Coyle and Christie, that a deicing system would add weight and could affect the V-22's performance. Weight is a critical issue with most aircraft programs.
"If they get too heavy, they don't fly as well," said Coyle, now with the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank.
Darcy said weight was never an issue. He said the third and final five-month phase of deicing testing begins in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Monday.
He said all operational V-22s will be outfitted with a deicing system by late 2007 - the year the V-22 heads for combat.
