US Navy MV-22 Ospreys take-off during an amphibious raid for a multinational littoral operations exercise as part of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2022. (Royal New Zealand Air Force photo by Cpl. Dillon Anderson)
WASHINGTON — Amid a Pentagon-wide grounding of the V-22 fleet, the second most senior Marine, an aviator himself, vowed the service will get the “revolutionary platform” flying safely again, arguing the fix for “hard clutch engagements” being installed on the planes right now has corrected the key issue at the center of several mishaps.
“We have had issues with hard clutch engagements, but we have rectified that to a 99 percentile eventuality of not happening with input quill assemblies being replaced at the 800-hour mark,” Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney told an audience at the Hudson Institute today. “What I will guarantee from [a] Marine Corps perspective is all the information, all the data will be duly analyzed and treated to get that airplane back into flight as soon as possible.”
Mahoney is the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and effectively the acting commandant until Gen. Eric Smith recovers from his recent heart surgery. He’s also a career aviator with flight hours in the V-22 Osprey and defended the platform, despite the spate of mishaps over the past two years. Variants of the V-22 are flown by the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force as well as by foreign militaries such as the Japanese.
The Marine Corps first publicly acknowledged the clutch failure phenomenon in August 2022, following a temporary grounding of the Air Force’s Osprey fleet. At the time, the Marine Corps told reporters it had known about the issue since 2010.
The most recent mishap took place in late November when an Air Force CV-22 crashed off the coast of Yakushima Island in southwest Japan. The Defense Department five days after the crash concluded all eight crew members were killed. The cause of the crash remains under investigation, and it’s not yet clear whether it was connected to the hard clutch issue the Pentagon has been grappling with for years.
Mahoney today said he would not comment on an ongoing investigation except to offer sympathies for the friends and families of the airmen. “Great airmen, great special operators,” he added.
The senior Marine said in the meantime his service has been able to substitute its V-22 fleet with other aircraft, such as the CH-53K King Stallion helicopter, to supply forces underway. But he also acknowledged it becomes problematic from a training standpoint if the skills of V-22 crews begin to atrophy as the Pentagon-wide grounding persists.
“At some point, if a pilot doesn’t fly, if a maintainer doesn’t turn a wrench, if an observer or crew chief isn’t applying their trade. … There’s a competence issue, and then there’s a safety issue,” he said.
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