/reeve.gif)
Some excerpts:
The Marine Corps V-22 Osprey’s safety, combat effectiveness and reliability have improved in the past year, according to the Pentagon’s test office.
The report is good news for makers of the $53 billion V-22 Osprey, the Pentagon’s sixth-largest acquisition program.
The Navy plans to spend $8 billion this year to buy an additional 122 V-22s, made by Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron Inc. (TXT)’s Bell Helicopter unit and Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA)
The $8 billion in proposed V-22 spending, in the early discussion stages, would supply aircraft to the Marine Corps and Air Force through 2017, renewing for five more years a current deal calling for 174 aircraft.
The additional purchases would complete the Marine Corps and Air Force plans to field 410 V-22s. The Navy has said it might purchase 48 separately after 2018.
Each Osprey costs about $65 million in basic “flyaway” assembly costs. A more complete measure is a current-year program unit cost of about $116.2 million apiece that includes past expenditures for research and development, according to program office data.
“Across the fleet, the V-22 generally meets reliability and maintainability requirements,” Gilmore wrote. Still, the V- 22 in its most recent testing was available only 53 percent of the time it was required, rather than the specification of 82 percent, according to Gilmore.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in a Jan. 6 interview with Bloomberg Television that the Osprey is a defense program “that’s going to take a very careful inspection.”