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http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/ ... t-112910w/
Osprey availability still hovering at 50 percent
By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 29, 2010 12:37:21 EST
The Air Force’s hybrid helicopter-airplane is only five years old but spends almost as much time on the ground as it does in the air, maintenance figures show.
The CV-22 Osprey ended fiscal 2010 with a mission-capable rate of 54.3 percent.
On any given day, from Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, half of the special operations tilt-rotor aircraft couldn’t fly their full range of missions.
The Osprey’s fiscal 2009 mission-capable rate was 50.1 percent, the lowest ever.
Only the RQ-4 Global Hawk and two aging aircraft, B-1B Lancer and the C-5A Galaxy, had worse mission-capable numbers, according to the data.
2010 mission-capable rates
The CV-22’s mission-capable rate for FY 2010 was 54.30 percent, fourth-worst for the service.
Aircraft, rate
RQ-4, 41.64 percent
B-1B, 43.82 percent
C-5A, 52.66 percent
CV-22, 54.30 percent
B-2, 54.86 percent
C-5B, 59.59 percent
F-22, 60.94 percent
EC-130J, 65.17 percent
HC-130, 69.90 percent
A-10, 70.46 percent
EC-130H, 70.62 percent
F-15C, 70.96 percent
E-3, 71.60 percent
F-15E, 72.46 percent
C-130H, 73.85 percent
B-52H, 74.61 percent
HH-60, 74.65 percent
KC-10A, 74.78 percent
F-16, 75.39 percent
T-38C, 76.15 percent
C-130E, 76.67 percent
T-1A, 79.73 percent
T-6A, 80.34 percent
T-38A, 80.41 percent
KC-135T, 80.41 percent
UH-1, 80.87 percent
KC-135R, 81.06 percent
E-8, 81.08 percent
U-2, 81.22 percent
C-130J, 82.27 percent
C-17A, 84.43 percent
MQ-9, 91.95 percent
MQ-1, 92.98 percent
The RQ-4 had a mission-capable rate of 41.64 percent.
The B-1B, operational since 1986 and with a notoriously complicated hydraulics system, had a mission-capable rate of 43.82 percent.
The C-5A, the massive transport first delivered during the Vietnam War, had a mission-capable rate of 52.6 percent.
No common problem such as a software glitch or engine malfunction led to the Osprey’s low rate, said Col. Peter Robichaux, who oversees the health of Air Force Special Operations Command aircraft.
Most sat on the flight line waiting for replacement parts or maintainers to fix them.
One number that improved was the Osprey’s cannibalization rate, the number of times per 100 flights that a part had to be removed from one aircraft and installed on another to get it flying.
The fiscal 2010 rate of 4.74 percent was a record low. Fiscal 2009’s rate stood at 12.67 percent.
For Robichaux, the Osprey’s low rate is a statistical quirk — not an indicator of the hybrid’s long-term viability.
“The numbers are a result of our small fleet size,” said Robichaux, whose AFSOC title is director of logistics.
“That can drive the numbers down.”
The Air Force has 16 CV-22s and is scheduled to receive five to six more a year until 50 are on hand, probably by 2016.
Taking one plane off the flight schedule for a day pushes down the mission-capable rate for that day by about 6 percentage points.
AFSOC believes the Osprey’s rate will be about 80 percent by the time the last of the CV-22s is delivered, Robichaux said.
The Marine Corps also flies the Osprey, the MV-22 variant. The MV-22 had a mission-capable rate of 60 percent in fiscal 2009; the fiscal 2010 rate is not yet available, according to the Corps.
Marine pilots began flying the Osprey in 1999. Today, the Corps flies more than 155 Ospreys and intends to buy another 205. The Navy wants 48.
New aircraft often have low mission-capable rates for three reasons:
Parts inventories can be low, technical orders explaining how to make repairs aren’t clear and even the most experienced maintainers have just a few years with the plane.
Many planes also see their mission-capable rates slowly improve as they age.
The F-22 Raptor, for example, went from 51.25 percent in 2003 to 60.94 percent in 2010.
The CV-22, though, has a declining mission-capable rate. In 2006, when the first operational aircraft arrived, the rate was 61.4 percent.
The Air Force is putting faith in the Osprey to be its front-line plane for flying and landing behind enemy lines to deliver special operations teams.
That role puts the CV-22s at forward operating bases, where weather conditions are often harsh and parts and maintainers can be in short supply.
To prove the Osprey’s potential, AFSOC officials point to the hybrid’s 2010 deployment to Afghanistan.
For the four months that the 8th Special Operations Squadron had five Ospreys in the war zone, the CV-22s had a 77.4 percent mission-capable rate, squadron commander Lt. Col. Shawn Cameron said,
“We took most of our maintainers with us,” Cameron said. “It was a very focused effort.”
During the deployment, one CV-22 crashed, killing two airmen, a soldier and a contractor. AFSOC has yet to release the cause of the accident.