http://breakingdefense.com/2015/01/navy ... -delivery/
The Navy will buy V-22 Osprey tiltrotors to replace its aging C-2A Greyhound turboprop aircraft in flying carrier on board delivery (COD) missions.
Breaking Defense obtained a Jan. 5 memo, signed by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford.
It stipulates that the Navy will buy four V-22s each year from fiscal 2018 to 2020.
“The Navy is responsible for modifying these V-22s into an HV-22 configuration for the COD mission,” the MOU states.
C-2A maker Northrop Grumman has proposed building a modernized version incorporating features of the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye tactical early warning aircraft.
The twin-engine turboprop C-2As carry cargo, mail and passengers between aircraft carriers and shore — a mission called COD for “carrier on-board delivery.” The first Greyhound prototypes flew in 1964.
Under the Jan. 5 MOU, the first dozen HV-22s would be taken from what would have been the Marine Corps share of V-22s built in fiscal 2018-20 under the prospective third multiyear contract.
Those first Navy V-22s will be replaced in the Marine Corps inventory in fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023 with a dozen Ospreys “that would have been allocated to the Navy,” the memo provides.