Osprey gears up for deployment

With October named the deadliest month of the year for troops after two unrelated helicopter crashes resulted in the deaths of 14 Americans last week, the military is sending a new kind of aircraft into Afghanistan.

Earlier in October, Department of Defense officials announced Marine Medium Tiltrotor 261, based at New River Air Station, would be the first MV-22 Osprey squadron to deploy to Afghanistan sometime in November.

New River is home to all four operational Osprey squadrons, with two more expected to become operational over the next year or so. One squadron, VMM-263, was near Alexandria, Egypt, with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, working on amphibious assault demonstrations with the U.S.S. Bataan earlier this month.

A spokesman with Marine Corps Forces Command, Lt. Col. Matt Morgan, said that the VMM-261 also known as “The Raging Bulls,” had become fully operational Oct. 1, after transitioning to the Osprey from the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in early 2008.

Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, has called the Osprey, with its agility and speed, an aircraft that’s “made for Afghanistan.” Its unique tiltrotors allow it to lift off vertically like a helicopter but fly like an airplane.

The Osprey “can fly faster, farther than any rotary wing aircraft,” Morgan said.

Its versatile construction also means the Osprey operates well in austere environments such as the deserts of Afghanistan, where landing strips and support structures might be scarce.

“We are able to operate in places where there is not otherwise a robust infrastructure,” Morgan said. “The Osprey was designed from the ground up to be able to operate in that.”

This will assist in performing operations such as casualty evacuations, he said.

The squadron will consist of 10 to 12 aircraft, accompanied by about 200 Marines, according to the DoD.

Richard Whittle, an independent author and journalist from Chevy Chase, Md., whose book “The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey,” will be published in April, said the Osprey has another advantage over helicopters: The higher altitudes at which it tends to fly can put it beyond the range of ground fire. Helicopters tend to fly low, using the element of surprise as a defense.

“Riding in the Osprey in Afghanistan may be safer than riding in a helicopter,” he said.

Whittle flew with a New River-based Osprey squadron in Iraq while working on his book in 2007 and said the cruising altitude averaged about 8,000 feet.

“That gets you well above the threat of small arms and rocket-propelled grenades,” he said.

Some concerns that persist about the Osprey’s first venture into Afghanistan pertain to its ability to operate in the higher altitudes, 6,500 feet or more above sea level across most of the country, as a rotor aircraft. And after recent successful deployments to Iraq, the Osprey may now be tested in an environment with a greater amount of combat situations and harsher conditions.

“The idea of having an aircraft that can take off vertically and fly fast has been a holy grail in the history of aviation,” Whittle said.

Contact Hope Hodge at 910-219-8453 at hhodge@freedomenc.com.