Latest news with #V-22
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Could this device help catch Osprey clutch problems before disaster?
The Navy has awarded defense and aviation technology company Shift5 a contract to test predictive maintenance technology on the V-22 Osprey, which the company hopes might prevent gearbox catastrophes that have proven fatal in recent years. Under Shift5′s contract with Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, the Marine Corps will run the company's manifold technology on Osprey's flown by its operational test squadron. This will allow the V-22 Joint Program Office to test how well continuous operational data monitoring works on the tilt-rotor aircraft, and how to develop rules for detecting maintenance problems that need to be quickly addressed, the company said in a release Wednesday. 'Given the criticality of solving some of these life-threatening issues that are happening on the V-22, it really is all about providing real-time insights to the crew for situational awareness so they can make better decisions,' said Shift5 chief executive and co-founder Josh Lospinoso. Perhaps most critically, Lospinoso said, the predictive maintenance technology could help the military understand how problems called 'hard clutch engagements' happen. Hard clutch engagements occur when an Osprey's clutch connecting the engine to a propeller's rotor gearbox briefly slips and then reengages. This can cause the aircraft to lurch and damage crucial components, which, in some instances, has been a factor in fatal Osprey crashes. Five Marines died in a June 2022 Osprey crash in Southern California, which was later attributed to a hard clutch engagement. Multiple other Ospreys have experienced hard clutch engagements that alarmed Air Force leaders and have, at times, caused aircrews to cut flights short. An Air Force CV-22B Osprey also crashed off the coast of Japan in November 2023, killing eight airmen and prompting a military-wide grounding of the tilt-rotor aircraft that lasted for months. The Air Force concluded that a critical gear in that Osprey's proprotor gearbox failed and caused the crash. Shift5′s manifold device will help build a dataset of clutch engagements, analyzing whether such engagements are becoming more aggressive and contributing factors, Lospinosa said. 'That really is the Holy Grail that NAVAIR has been after,' he said in an interview with Defense News. Shift5′s device, a four-pound box that will be plugged into the Osprey's data network, will upgrade how the aircraft collects data and make it more readily available to aircrews via a tablet-like display, Lospinoso said. Until now, he said, the most important data on hard clutch engagements have typically been only able to be accessed after the aircraft lands and investigators dive deep into the aircraft's inner workings. 'It's, in some cases, literally just taking data that already exists on a data bus and presenting it to the user,' Lospinoso said. That data can include precise readings on the intensity and frequency of vibrations within the gearbox, for example, Lospinoso said. The device could also give Osprey pilots reminders about the many actions they need to take and environmental factors they need to monitor, he said, which could reduce the chances of human error. 'Being an Osprey pilot is probably the most challenging job flying any aircraft of any kind,' Lospinoso said. 'If they forget to take [certain steps], it can be extremely dangerous, but there's nothing in the cockpit alerting them to [the fact that] these conditions exist. [The Shift5 device's alerts are] almost like the equivalent of a seat belt reminder.' According to Lospinoso, Shift5′s device will just be tested by the Joint Program Office for now. Eventually, the company hopes to have them installed in all of the military's Ospreys, which he said would require a phased approach of taking some Ospreys down to install the devices during maintenance. He hopes the military and Shift5 might be able to start working towards full fielding of the device in the next quarter.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CEO shares secret to creating this unique aircraft the Navy is investing over $7 million in to fly parts to broken warships
The US Navy is looking into using drones to deliver critical repair cargo to broken warships. The BlueWater Maritime Logistics UAS project seeks innovative VTOL designs. The unique PteroDynamics Transwing design recently received a $4.65 million contract expansion. The US Navy wants to know if roughly motorcycle-sized drones can do what its larger piloted workhorse helicopter and tiltrotor aircraft are currently doing — flying critical repair cargo out to broken warships. Critical repair parts for incapacitated warships, such as circuit boards, o-rings, or pumps, around half the time weigh less than a pound. The current delivery approach wastes fuel and other resources and puts a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on Military Sealift Command's H-60 and V-22 aircraft. No one really needs a heavy, crewed aircraft for this. There just isn't a proven alternative, at least not yet. Solving that problem — the primary focus of the Navy's BlueWater Maritime Logistics UAS project — is a major opportunity for defense tech firms like Colorado-based PteroDynamics Inc. "Something is valuable. It needs to get somewhere that is hard to get to. It has to get there quickly. It's time-sensitive. And people are paying a lot of money today to do that mission," PteroDynamics CEO Matthew Graczyk, told Business Insider. The company recently picked up a $4.65 million contract expansion from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division for the development of its novel Transwing aircraft design, bringing the total contract value to over $7 million. The new funding will support development of a new Transwing model, the XP-5. Multiple companies have contributed BlueWater UAS ideas, many of which are variations of classic designs. The Transwing, as an articulating- or "cracking-wing" design, is unique. It's a "very interesting design," the BlueWater project lead, Bill Macchione, told BI, explaining that the aim as the Navy evaluates uncrewed vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) designs is to find innovations with reduced complexity both in the engineering and employment. "That is what was very interesting about the PteroDynamics design being an articulating wing," he said. It's a "simple linear actuator that basically just articulates the wings on a pivot, and those pushers, those traditional propellers in fixed wing, become the lift propellers in VTOL mode." The first VTOL aircraft designs were early helicopters. Then came designs like lift jets, tail-sitter aircraft, and tilt rotors. PteroDynamics has now patented a new design that leverages the propellers in all flight modes and can fold the wings around the fuselage. Its wings stretch out in the cruise phase of flight and fold back during vertical flight to a configuration resembling a quadcopter during take-off and landing. Graczyk calls the Transwing design "VTOL 3.0." The unique design came from Val Petrov, a mathematician, chemist, and expert in nonlinear dynamics who spent years in asset and capital management. He wasn't an aviation engineer, but he was, as Graczyk told BI, a "tinkerer." "When you ask someone who is educated in a field, who has worked in a field, how to solve a problem, they go into how they've been taught to solve the problem," Graczyk said, and you ultimately end up with a variation of an existing design. "When you ask a guy who has not been taught how to solve the problem, that's where innovation lives," he said, telling BI that is the key to making something new. "That's where disruption happens. That is how Petrov was able to conceive of this Transwing that didn't come from Airbus or Lockheed or Raytheon or Boeing." Petrov is PteroDynamics' founder and chairman of its board. Whether the PteroDynamics design is what the Navy ultimately needs remains to be seen, but the service is interested. Some of the other uncrewed aircraft designs being looked at and tested by the Navy as part of the BlueWater program include Skyways V2.6, ShieldAI's V-BAT, and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Voly-50, among others featuring their own innovations. The Navy's BlueWater UAS technology development program started years ago, evolving from a 2018 study that found about 48% of all critical repair cargo being flown out to ships by Military Sealift Command aircraft is under 16 ounces, smaller than a regular water bottle. The study found that 76% of all parts are under 10 pounds, and 90% are under 50 pounds. The Navy is interested in determining whether VTOL drones weighing under 330 pounds can run these delivery missions instead of crewed aircraft. The drones have to be able to fly 400 nautical miles round trip, perhaps eventually 1,000 miles, on a mixture of electricity and JP-5 fuel with a 50-pound payload stored internally and land on the deck of a moving ship at sea without any support infrastructure and minimal sailor involvement. Using small drones points to big cost savings. Each Sikorsky SH-60/MH-60 Seahawk costs over $30 million and requires two fully trained and proficient human pilots. That is not even factoring in the operational and sustainment costs. In the drones, there also has to be a certain degree of autonomy. This is "not the kind of thing where somebody is sitting with a controller in their hand and controlling the aircraft," Graczyk said of the Transwing. "You lay out your mission on a computer, so just one laptop, an operator, and an aircraft, that's all you need, and you communicate the mission to the aircraft. You push go, and it takes off, does the mission, and lands. You don't have to be involved anymore." "To a certain extent, it can make decisions on its own," he said. Getting a drone to fly that mission is nothing like Amazon drone deliveries. Amazon doesn't have to worry about adversaries trying to shoot them down or jam their communications. And there is also no need to land it on a moving target in an unforgiving delivery environment. "Landing on ships and working around ships is not easy," John Bruening, the director of MSC's Taluga Group, told BI. Meeting the tough operational expectations of the Navy's BlueWater technology development program is a complex technological challenge that the Navy has been working with a range of companies to overcome. The project is not yet a program of record and is experimental for now. Still, this is clearly where military technology is heading. "The world is changing," Graczyk said. "We're seeing geopolitics changing, we're seeing the way warfare is conducted changing, and the way diplomacy is conducted, all of that's changing. There is a particular shift in bias toward higher volume, lower cost autonomous systems that are attritable, that are expendable." There are tremendous possibilities and "an evolutionary introduction into the market" is the key, he said. "We're trying to use this revolutionary technology to solve problems that exist today." Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mass. Senators write to NFL Commissioner urging to cancel aircraft flyover linked to servicemember deaths
WASHINGTON (WWLP) – Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Friday, urging him to cancel the planned flyover of the V-22 Osprey aircraft on Super Bowl Sunday. The senators wrote to Goodell with concerns regarding the flyover due to the aircraft's 21 major accidents it has been a part of since 1992. These accidents have resulted in 64 deaths. Pittsfield native Air Force member killed in Osprey crash near Japan The most recent crash occurred off the coast of Japan in November 2023 and caused eight service members to die, including Staff Sergeant Jacob Galliher, a young father from Pittsfield. In December 2024, an Osprey experienced an engine failure and was forced to land. Markey, who is a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and warren, who is a member of the Armed Services Committee, expressed these worries when writing to the commissioner. 'On the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, we appreciate the NFL's effort to honor servicemembers,' the lawmakers wrote. 'But we believe that it is inappropriate to feature the Osprey in this way and that the aircraft should not be included in the flyover.' 'The families of these brave servicemembers are still grieving the loss of their loved ones. They should not have to be reminded of their loss while watching the Super Bowl. Out of respect for the military families and in deference to the safety concerns about the aircraft, we strongly urge you to cancel the planned V-22 Osprey Super Bowl flyover this Sunday.' The senators also wrote to the Pentagon in November 2024 raising safety concerns about the V-22 aircraft and the increase in dangerous incidents. They stated that until those concerns are resolved, the Osprey should be grounded. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Hunt For A MV-22 Osprey Successor For The Marines Has Begun
A newly released U.S. Marine Aviation Plan shows the service is now looking at a successor to its MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors actively enough to give it a name: the Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) aircraft. The Marines have previously said that they expect the Osprey to serve into the 2060s, but have left the door open for that to change depending on other developments. The V-22 series has long been a controversial aircraft with sporadic limitations imposed on its operations, but has been facing notably increased scrutiny following a three-month-long grounding last year prompted by a fatal crash of a U.S. Air Force CV-22. The U.S. Marine Corps released its latest Aviation Plan earlier today, the first it has put out publicly since 2022. As of March 2024, the Marines had a total of 348 MV-22s in inventory and the service's objective fleet size is 360 aircraft. Marine Ospreys are currently assigned to units in the United States, as well as ones forward deployed in Japan and Djibouti. 'Configuration, inventory, and supply chain management remain the top areas of focus as the MV-22B Osprey fleet right-sizes to meet future requirements and challenges,' the Osprey section of the 2025 Aviation Plan says. The document highlights various ongoing modernization efforts, including plans to integrate new electronic warfare, communications, survivability, and Degraded Visual Environment (DVE) flight capabilities. It also notes continued safety and reliability-related work, including improvements to the proprotor gearbox that was at the center of the crash that led to last year's fleet-wide grounding. A larger Renewed V-22 Aircraft Modernization Plan (ReVAMP) 'will ensure platform relevance until the end of its service life and the development and fielding of the Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) aircraft,' the new aviation plan adds. The Marines announced last year that they had begun initial studies into what ReVAMP might entail, including the potential for the total replacement of major structural components like wings and engine nacelles, as well as other upgrades and modifications. The Marine Corps does not appear to have previously disclosed the existence of the NGAS effort and the 2025 Aviation Plan provides no further details. TWZ has reached out to the Marines and to the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), the latter of which serves as the central manager for major aviation programs for both services, for more information. NAVAIR also leads the V-22 Joint Program Office (JPO), overseeing the entire U.S. military Osprey family that includes Air Force CV-22s and Navy CMV-22s. The JPO supports foreign Osprey operators, of which Japan is currently the only one, as well. However, the basic fact of the existence of NGAS is still notable given that the Marines have pushed back when asked about planning for a V-22 successor in the past. 'It has a service life for many more years. … we're approaching in the next couple of years service-level decisions on what we do at kind of a mid-life of the V-22,' Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, Assistant Deputy Commandant for Aviation, said during a press call in March 2024 in response to a question from this author on what might come after Osprey. 'There is no taking our eye off of V-22 and the years of service like what it has in front of us.' The Marines had made Joyce available to speak to TWZ and other reporters at that time about the lifting of the three-month-long grounding of V-22s following the fatal CV-22 crash, which had occurred off the coast of Japan in December 2023. 'We are not having conversations right now about anything that replaces V-22. We're always thinking deep, 2040 and beyond right now, for sure. And then we are acutely focused on our V-22,' Joyce added. 'We're not talking about replacing V-22. We're thinking deep and we're focused on V-22 at mid-life.' 'ReVAMP is kind of the next cycle of this thing. So, you're going to see V-22s darkening the skies for, you know, the next 30 or 40 years without question,' Marine Col. Brian Taylor, then head of the V-22 Joint Program Office, also told TWZ and other attendees at the Modern Day Marine exhibition in April 2024. 'There is a ton of life left in this platform, and there is a ton of mission left in this platform.' Still, 'once we do this [the initial ReVAMP studies], the other question kind of goes back to the service of 'hey, is this where you want to invest? Or is there something completely different?'' Taylor added. 'So, you know, I'm a little bit biased, I would love to see the V-22 stay in service, you know, for the next 100 years. But if there's a better thing that we need to pivot to that's really kind of up to the services.' Taylor explicitly mentioned the High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) program, which is a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) effort exploring future VTOL concepts offering significant speed and range capabilities. HSVTOL is paired with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) program. Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary, and Bell are currently developing demonstrator designs for SPRINT. For its part, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) has long lauded the unique capabilities its CV-22s offer, but also has made no secret of its view that the Osprey is an increasingly dated design. A Bell/Boeing team started the development of the Osprey back in the 1980s and there were numerous serious setbacks before the Marines finally became the first service to start flying them operationally in 2007. 'The CV-22, it's been a unique capability that the special operations enterprise has always needed,' Air Force Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind, then head of AFSOC, also told TWZ and other reporters at the time of the lifting of the grounding last March. At the same time, 'the V-22 is still 1980s, first-generation tilt-rotor technology. And we're in 2024.' Increased range, as well as greater speed to help get across those distances faster, will be key considerations for the Marine's NGAS effort, especially with an eye toward a future high-end in the Pacific against China. The Corps has touted its ability to conduct long-range and long-endurance MV-22 operations in the Pacific region, but this presents significant challenges and resource requirements, especially when it comes to aerial refueling, as you can read more about here. Those issues would only be magnified in an actual conflict against an opponent with substantial anti-access and area denial capabilities. The same kinds of considerations have been driving SPRINT/HSVTOL and also played a major role in the U.S. Army's decision to pick a design based on Bell's advanced V-280 Valor tilt-rotor as the winner of its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition. The V-280 already incorporated significant lessons Bell learned from the V-22, as you can learn more about in this past TWZ feature. FLRAA aircraft are now set to replace a substantial part of the Army's H-60 Black Hawk fleets, including special operations MH-60 variants in service with the elite 160th Special Operation Aviation Regiment (SOAR). There has been talk about a potential Marine variant or derivative of FLRAA in the past, which could be another route to an MV-22 successor in addition to leveraging SPRINT/HSVTOL. At the same time, the MV-22 currently offers features important to the Marines, such as a folding main wing and rotors to meet shipboard space requirements and a rear ramp that helps with the loading and unloading of larger cargoes, not found on the FLRAA design. It could be complicated to incorporate those and other elements into a Marine version. It's also worth noting that the Marines have looked at the V-280's smaller uncrewed cousin, the V-247 Vigilant, to meet separate requirements to provide additional strike and other capabilities. Since at least 2021, the Navy has been exploring options for replacing at least a portion of its H-60 Seahawk variants, along with its MQ-8B/C Fire Scout drone helicopters, as part of an effort called Future Vertical Lift-Maritime Strike (FVL-MS), as well. Any Marine discussions about the future of the MV-22 now also come amid serious new scrutiny of the entire Osprey program following last year's grounding, including from members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle. Much of the Osprey fleet was just grounded again briefly in December following another mishap involving a CV-22. 'As the backbone of Marine Corps combat assault transport capability, MV-22B squadrons have conducted a total of 109 operational deployments and flown over 588,000 flight hours since 2007. The MV-22B flies approximately twice as many flight hours per year as any other Marine Corps rotary-wing aircraft,' the Marine Corps 2025 Aviation Plan does note, reiterating long-standing talking points about its record. 'The MV-22 maintains mishap rates on par with other Marine Aviation assets. As of 1 August 2024, the MV-22's 10-year (2014-2024) Class A mishap rate is 3.15 per every 100,000 flights [sic] hours, lower than the Marine Corps average of 3.24.' There is considerable uncertainty around the general outlook for U.S. defense spending under the new Trump administration, as well. Though much remains to be learned about the Marine Corps NGAS plans, the service is now formally looking ahead to what comes after the MV-22. Update: 2:30 PM EST – The U.S. Marine Corps has now provided additional information about the NGAS plan and the future outlook for the service's MV-22s. 'The Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) will fit within Project Eagle, which is Marine Aviation's strategic approach over the next three Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) cycles to feed the Requirements and Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. The Capability Development Document (CDD) development phase for the NGAS is forecasted for the early 2030s, which will guide Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) and prototyping beginning in the mid-2030s,' a spokesperson for the Marine Corps' top headquarters at the Pentagon told TWZ. 'Early material solution analysis is ongoing as Marine Aviation closely follows the Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program and considers technology development initiatives within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and across industry. Digital engineering, open architectures, and a modernized acquisition approach will underline Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC) and Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Experimental Modernization and Advanced Development Team (XMA-ADT)'s strategy towards capability development and fielding of NGAS.' 'The V-22 Osprey is anticipated to remain in service through 2055. This extended operational timeline is supported by ongoing modernization efforts aimed at addressing specific capability and reliability requirements,' the Marine spokesperson added. 'These efforts include component replacement, system redesign, and predictive maintenance initiatives to enhance platform reliability and support the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) and Joint Force in future operating environments. Modernization initiatives will ensure that the V-22 continues to meet the evolving needs of the Marine Corps, providing critical medium lift assault support capabilities well into the future.' Howard Altman contributed to this story. Contact the author: joe@
