While Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) approved a return to flight with safety controls in place for the V-22 Osprey on March 8, Air Force Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), is taking a phased approach to resumption of CV-22 flights.
At a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel last week, Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas), a retired Navy pilot, said that he had spoken with the head of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, on the lag in return to flight of the CV-22.
“Just days” after the March 8 NAVAIR authorization, “the Marine Corps and the Japanese started flying, and the Navy has as well,” Ellzey said. “We talked to the SOCOM commander a couple of weeks ago, and he said their operations had been severely impacted…because of the V-22 grounding.”
“I’ve spoken to the AFSOC commander, and he can’t give me a timeline for return to flight,” Ellzey said. “It’s been six weeks since the Marine Corps and Japanese started flying, as well as the Navy. That’s a long time considering the operational impacts, and I wanna know when the CV-22 is gonna start flying again?”
At the hearing, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin replied that he has spoken with Bauernfeind and that three of the CV-22s have gone through functional check flights (FCFs) in preparation for a return to operations.
“We are making a deliberate approach, but it is a comprehensive approach because the manner in which the CV-22 is used in the Air Force is much different,” Allvin said. “He [Bauernfeind] is in lock step with the [V-22] joint program office and his sister services in understanding how and why they are returning theirs to fly, but he is taking AFSOC in a deliberate manner to ensure every one of them–the maintenance records are checked, and [for] every one the crews are ready to fly.”
Ellzey then said that he had received the same answer from Bauernfeind. “Quite frankly, how he [Bauernfeind] downed it, based on a video that was pre-emptive to a mishap investigation–I was a mishap investigator. I flew helos and jets–the decision to do that should not have been approved, and it hurt our national security,” Ellzey said.
Defense Daily will add any comments from AFSOC to this article.
DoD grounded V-22s last Dec. 6 after a preliminary investigation of a fatal CV-22 crash off Japan on Nov. 29 blamed a component failure, but military officials have not identified which component (Defense Daily, Dec. 8, 2023). The Marine Corps indicated in January that it was replacing input quill assemblies at 800 flight hours to help prevent hard clutch engagements.
The Bell [TXT]/Boeing [BA] V-22 has three variants–the Navy’ CMV-22B, Marine Corps’ MV-22 and the Air Force’s CV-22.