The services are preparing to brief Secretary Austin about plans to get the Osprey flying again

WASHINGTON: The military services will take a significant step toward getting the V-22 Osprey fleet back in the air as they outline their plans to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday to address safety concerns stemming from a deadly crash in Japan, three Defense Officials said.

The U.S. fleet of about 400 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft has been grounded for 83 days after a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B crashed in Japan on Nov. 29, killing eight service members. It’s unclear how soon Austin will make a decision on the matter.

The Air Force has said it knows what failed with the Osprey, but still doesn’t know why it failed. In the months since, the services have worked on a plan to mitigate the known material failure through additional safety checks and a new approach to how Osprey is operated to safely work around the known problem. , has established a more conservative approach, said a third official, a senior defense official familiar with the V-22 program.

Japan is the only international partner in the Osprey program and has also grounded its fleet of 14 V-22s after the November crash. The return to flying is a sensitive topic in the country, where public opinion on the Osprey is mixed. One of the defense officials said no American Ospreys would return to flying until Japan had an opportunity to consider military plans.

After that, each service will make its own decision about returning to flight. Not all services will need to bring their Ospreys back into operation at once.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the Osprey decision process.

The military-wide grounding has had the deepest impact on the U.S. Marine Corps, which relies on more than 300 MV-22 Ospreys to conduct a large portion of its aviation mission. Air Force Special Operations Command has approximately 50 CV-22B Ospreys. The Navy plans to replace its C-2 Greyhounds, which ferry passengers to aircraft carriers, with more than two dozen CMV-22 Ospreys.

The presidential fleet also uses a limited number of Ospreys to transport White House staff, security personnel, and journalists. They have also been closed since December 6.

A small number of Marine Corps MV-22s in Djibouti have been exempted from grounding since January 17 due to mission needs and have been flying without incident since then.

The extraordinary decision to ground the plane on military status in December reflected questions about the safety of the platform. Three Marines were killed in an Osprey crash in August, just before the November incident in Japan.

The first Osprey became operational in 2007 after decades of testing. But more than 50 soldiers have died over the lifetime of the program, either while flying test flights or while flying training flights.

The loss of the Osprey has impacted operations, but a return to flying will not be immediate and the risk will still be high due to the time those crews will not be flying.

Flight safety is dependent on pilots maintaining posture in the aircraft – meaning they are flying regularly enough to be proficient in all types of flying, such as night missions, close formation flying and refueling. The senior defense official said it would take at least 30 days for the crew to fly after the grounding is lifted.

The services also need to ensure that aircraft are ready. Both the Air Force and Marine Corps are running Osprey engines; Marines are conducting ground operations to keep the aircraft operational.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – The Associated Press)