MV-22 Osprey crash in Okinawa Crew survives..

Box hauler said:
I agree that the recent stats may be suspicious but what is the call on this one? Marines can't fly or they can't maintain the aircraft?. To suggest that the marines don't need to fly just seems like an ignorant statement, and thats from a navy guy.
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I have no idea what the problem is - I only know that it seems disproportionately to affect the USMC. MX, pilots, culture - doesn't really matter, needs to be fixed, lest we see more of the same.
 
bunk22 said:
The majority of losses have always been non combat, training specifically. The USMC has fantastic aviators, overall has an incredible safety rate, especially since the induction of NATOPS and there will always be losses, especially in highly dynamic flight environments. Of course nobody knows what happened with this mishap as it's too early to speculate. If you actually look into military mishaps, using HFACS as the primary tool into mishap investigation, it is common for human error to be the casual factor in most of them. That goes for civilian aviation as well. Regardless, your comment was insulting, specifically coming from someone who I assume has no military experience, specifically flying the Navy/Marine Corps way. That is probably why some folks have jumped your shiite. You obviously don't understand why USMC aviation exists either, otherwise the comment would not have been stated as you did. Ignorance might be bliss but it isn't a get out of jail free card either.
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You don't need military experience to add - lest you think that eight hull losses in a year is acceptable.

There's a reason the military reports to civilians, and this would be it - the fact that we can be objective. As to the question of why this is happening, that's all you guys.
 
Murdoughnut said:
You don't need military experience to add - lest you think that eight hull losses in a year is acceptable.

There's a reason the military reports to civilians, and this would be it - the fact that we can be objective. As to the question of why this is happening, that's all you guys.
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Well, it used to report to civvies. Not so sure anymore. And if, in fact, it is now reporting to a military authority, whose?
 
Murdoughnut said:
Nope, I'm a tax payer that just thinks eight lost air frames in a year, not to mention the loss of life, calls for a reevaluation of how things are going.
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That's great and all and I must admit that I haven't looked up the numbers but is this some massive new revelation in the military community? I understand that loosing this many CIV airplanes in a year would be big news but these guys are doing a different job. I'm sure happy you pay taxes and all but unless your a$$ is in the seat in a combat zone or preparing to be in one it's easy to call a diamond a spade....
 
Crop Duster said:
Meh, IMO, that's a little too loud. Marines were made for shipboard discipline (think MPs in the Army) and to help with ground landings. They were very un-seaman-like. Due partly to that and partly to the fact that, like security guards everywhere, the bigger the better, they kept hitting their heads on the hatches, and thereby obtained their nickname... Jarheads. We'll leave inquiries about normalized mean IQ to those more qualified. But, no... the Marines would still be the Marines without airplanes. Marines, like every other organization, are highly susceptible to tribalism and mission creep and its attendant budgetary advantages. Whether we need 'em or not, planes cost a lot, and WE need to fly them. That means more budget. That means more influence. That means more spending...and more budget... and more influence... and more spending... ... repeat ad absurdia.

The Osprey is a fool's errand ... and the US taxpayer is the last fool standing.

Just for the record, that said, I know a bunch of Marine aviators who are some of the finest aviators out there. I also know some who... well, yeah, not so much. Kinda like life in general. Damned near everything conforms to the 80/20 rule.
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Perhaps it was a little loud. Perhaps visceral is a more appropriate word. The Marine Corps has evolved a bit since the time you mention which was like, oh, 200 years ago. The American public WANTS a Marine Corps (vice needing one). I suspect that there is more to the expectation than to maintain discipline on ships. And so, no, the Marine Corps would absolutely cease to be the Marine Corps as humanity knows it without its air wing. It fights as an air ground task force(with obvious cooperation from the Navy on some things) and cannot achieve the goals that the American public expects from the United States Marine Corps without it. You mention mission creep, but Marine Corps operations have had the same doctrinal underpinnings for 40 years, the same written mission since 1947, and has had a combat air component for 100 years.

Speaking to the very obvious fact that we have had a butt-ton of aviation mishaps lately, a lot of the findings are still privileged, unfortunately. What can be said is that each accident is highly unique and the only trend right now is low flight time per pilot and stuff breaking at critical times. I personally blame Congress and the Mil-Industrial complex. The blood is most clearly on their hands. Hence why I am even more insulted by spears thrown at Marine Aviation, like the pilots or the Marines being worked like slaves to fix the airframes are somehow the reason. I am fortunate (in a way) to be a member of a community that has a very long institutional memory of putting extremely gifted aviators in the ground. We know where the boundaries are for currency and proficiency and we don't cross them, even in a resource constrained environment. Our leadership fights like rabid dogs against the bureaucracy which attempts to erode our standards as it only cares about making red boxes green on briefing slides.

As for the jab at the Osprey, jab away. They're used to it. Unfortunately, they're combat proven and can roll into battle on a moments notice and perform brilliantly and do so better than any medium lift helicopter ever dreamed of. Their pilots are idiots and I don't like being in the same class of aircraft (according to the FAA only) much less being in the same room as them, but they get the job done. My take on the rough first decade they had: the R&D for the devil's whirlybird was going to happen one way or another, just as good it was the Marine Corps to do it as anybody since we're into the whole VSTOL concept, and we do have the smallest bureaucracy holding us back. Roughly the same sentiment for the unicorn-jet that's starting to darken the skies now.

And by the way, it is in fact a bad year but our mishap rate per 100,000 flight hours is still NOTHING compared to the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even the 90s.
 
Murdoughnut said:
You don't need military experience to add - lest you think that eight hull losses in a year is acceptable.

There's a reason the military reports to civilians, and this would be it - the fact that we can be objective. As to the question of why this is happening, that's all you guys.
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The military doesn't exactly "report to civilians", at least in the sense of the masses. They are accountable to ranking members of the elected federal government and to specific folks in the cabinet, who I would argue are not really "civilians", though technically they are of course. I don't really see any of those folks as being "objective", and some are arguably the exact reason that the USMC doesn't have the money to fix their broken jets (or plopters)
 
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Flyinthrew said:
As for the jab at the Osprey, jab away. They're used to it. Unfortunately, they're combat proven and can roll into battle on a moments notice and perform brilliantly and do so better than any medium lift helicopter ever dreamed of. Their pilots are idiots and I don't like being in the same class of aircraft (according to the FAA only) much less being in the same room as them, but they get the job done. My take on the rough first decade they had: the R&D for the devil's whirlybird was going to happen one way or another, just as good it was the Marine Corps to do it as anybody since we're into the whole VSTOL concept, and we do have the smallest bureaucracy holding us back. Roughly the same sentiment for the unicorn-jet that's starting to darken the skies now.

And by the way, it is in fact a bad year but our mishap rate per 100,000 flight hours is still NOTHING compared to the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even the 90s.
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If we were worried about losses and loss rates (both peacetime as well as combat) determining whether we should keep an aircraft in inventory or not, we would've chitcanned the AV-8A/C and even the B, a long time ago. But, we don't use those as metrics.

It's a dangerous business with a fair amount of risk that cannot be mitigated without loss of capability. Accidents will happen. You learn from them, try to tweak practices a bit, and move on. While risk can be reduced somewhat, it will always be present in many forms just due to the nature of ops.
 
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zippy said:
You sir, would be a fool then. I'm glad you're not a JTAC.
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I got the joke.

Nothing wrong with a little hyperbole once in awhile, but when you just want to make the bad man go away you take what you can get. The sentiment has some merit in that there's probably 2 degrees of separation or less between the aircrew and the Battlaion Air Officer, and that the aircrew also is more likely to have been engaged in ground combat. That can lead to some pretty incredible service within the bounds of allowable risk.

But yes, better to take the bomb that's overhead now than to wait 15 minutes. The Harrier has kept up as a highly capable CAS machine, but JDAM is really hard to mess up. Also, I have tremendous respect (and slight bit of envy) for every Mudhen crew I've ever come across.
 
zippy said:
You sir, would be a fool then. I'm glad you're not a JTAC.
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Cptnchia said:
If you didn't get the joke, at a minimum, you must be a Navy pilot, at worst, an Air Force pilot.
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Not a joke, it has happened. Which is fine. If the ground commander can afford to be choosy over the support that's above him, either the situation allows for that, or he possibly wants to run air in that has a shorter playtime first. Could be any number of legit reasons.
 
USMCmech said:
Anytime anything remotely negative happens on Okinawa (including traffic accidents on base), the government uses it as an excuse to complain and protest.


I'll grant you the fact that they do have legitimate issues with the US military bases on their island, but the driving force behind the protests are coming from land developers who only want to build apartments and shopping malls.
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I have a good friend from Japan and they are extremely concerned with the plan to move the base on Okinawa to a new location. A lot of the concerns are based on the fragile coral reef system that will be affected by the new base.
 
Murdoughnut said:
You don't need military experience to add - lest you think that eight hull losses in a year is acceptable.

There's a reason the military reports to civilians, and this would be it - the fact that we can be objective. As to the question of why this is happening, that's all you guys.
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Nope, you don't need to be military to question things in the military but knowing what you are talking about, doing research before making a comment gives your credibility and makes you looks much less ignorant. One, we don't report to civilians. Two, all mishaps in the military are looked into and if there is a common theme, a trend, steps are taken to reduce what may be causing the mishaps.

As far as the MV-22 goes, in 2015, it had a mishap rate of 3.2 per 100,000 flight hours. I know that in the C-2A community, folks are not happy with the CV-22 replacement, most citing the number of deaths during the introduction of the V-22. Again, research is their friend, during the first 8 years of the C-2A Greyhound, there were 6 crashes, every aircraft destroyed, with 59 people killed. Here it is, 2016 with C-2A's still going strong. A few have been lost since but no loss of life. The military operates in different environments, elements than civilians and there will be inherent dangers in how they operate.
 
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Training budgets are pretty strapped, to my understanding. I've read a number of reports where pilots simply aren't getting enough hours to maintain proficiency, but this has been around the F/A-18s. I haven't seen anything on that relative to Ospreys.
 
Flyinthrew said:
As for the jab at the Osprey, jab away. They're used to it. Unfortunately, they're combat proven and can roll into battle on a moments notice and perform brilliantly and do so better than any medium lift helicopter ever dreamed of. Their pilots are idiots and I don't like being in the same class of aircraft (according to the FAA only) much less being in the same room as them, but they get the job done. .
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Can't tell if joking. If so, mea culpa. If not, I'm trying to understand the bolded part.
 
killbilly said:
Can't tell if joking. If so, mea culpa. If not, I'm trying to understand the bolded part.
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Harrier and Osprey are both considered Powered Lift, by FAA Category.

A jet pilot not liking being in placed in the same category as rotor-wing-centric bretheren. And the ribbing that goes with it. :)
 
killbilly said:
Can't tell if joking. If so, mea culpa. If not, I'm trying to understand the bolded part.
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It's partly tongue in cheek, but also sort of real. When you composite a squadron and have to share a ready room on a ship with other platforms there is a bit of a clash of cultures. That along with what MikeD said. At the end of the day you're in the same gun club trying to get the same thing done, though.
 
Flyinthrew said:
It's partly tongue in cheek, but also sort of real. When you composite a squadron and have to share a ready room on a ship with other platforms there is a bit of a clash of cultures. That along with what MikeD said. At the end of the day you're in the same gun club trying to get the same thing done, though.
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AH, understood. Thanks.

I've always loved the Harrier. Seemed like trying to fly a jet and a helicopter at the same time. You guys definitely clank when you walk....
 
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