quote:

Originally posted by sadlerbw:
I mean Class A mishaps
- Bret

Thanks. I'm familiar with the "Class" levels for mishaps for military aircraft.

That's an interesting article, but like anything that's loaded with statistics there's a lot more to it than the numbers show.

Many (some might argue most) of the accidents with the AV8B are either a direct result or strongly contributed to by pilot errors. Having flown the AV8B for several years I'm very familiar with the capabilities and the shortcomings it has, especially in VSTOL flight. I'm also very familiar with the workload and requirements it takes to pilot the Harrier successfully. Every pilot makes mistakes; there is no "perfect" flight and each sortie has plenty of opportunities to screw something up. That's true for all aircraft - military, commercial, civil, etc. The difference between the Harrier and many conventional aircraft is that the Harrier is less forgiving of mistakes made in VSTOL flight.

I'm not saying that the Harrier doesn't have it's shortcomings. It does. So does every other aircraft. I flew with several of the mishap pilots named in the article and others who were involved in Class A mishaps not referred to in the article. Almost all of them were the direct or partial result of pilot error. Just a few examples: Loss of situational awareness at the boat at night while slowing into the hover to land and fly it into the sea; Make multiple runs on a well-defended target below a solid cloud deck and get bagged by an SA6; Fly along with the nozzles "cracked" (not stowed fully in the aft position) allowing the engine to overheat and catch fire resulting in ejection from the jet; Fuck up a rolling vertical takeoff at an outlying field and crash the jet into the trees. I could go on but as you can see, these were all the result of pilot error, not a fault of the jet itself. Yet they were all counted toward the Class A mishap rate for the jet. There are plenty more examples just like these.

The one exception is the ejection seat issue. It's a great seat and usually works. The sad fact is that "usually" isn't good enough, especially when operating in a VSTOL flight envelope. We lost a pilot in Spain in my squadron when the seat failed when he needed to get out.

Hindsight is always 20/20. To make the statement in the article that the Marines may have made a different choice of aircraft had they known the complexities, mishap rate, and lack of use of forward basing flexibility in real combat is ridiculous. When the Harrier was acquired, it was thought that in the event of war with the Warsaw Pact, conventional runways/airfields would be a prime target and thus we'd lose some of our ability to conduct tactical sorties. The Harrier gave the option to base in non-conventional areas close to the front to provide CAS and other tactical sorties as needed. That it wasn't used in this manner doesn't mean it was wrong to have the capability. I can make the same argument about nuclear weapons. We've not used them in anger in more than 78 years. Does that mean it was a mistake to spend all that money in their development, deployment, maintenance and disposal? Of course not.

Please know that I'm not a Harrier Fanboy. I'd much rather the Marines have the A-10 as it's a much better CAS aircraft. But the reputation that the Harrier has ("Scarier", "Lawn Dart", etc) were either earned when the AV8A was flying or coined by those who really have no idea what they're talking about. I enjoyed flying the Harrier. It was challenging but the rewards far outweighed the risks. But the Harrier, to me at least, doesn't hold a candle to the A4 Skyhawk in the "fun to fly" category.

Anyway - complex aircraft like the Harrier, the Osprey, the F-35B, etc - will more than likely have more issues than conventional ones. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be one of the tools in the toolbox.

US military grounds fleet of Osprey aircraft following deadly crash

By Sarah Rumpf-Whitten
Fox News
Published December 6, 2023 7:37pm EST
_____________________________________

The U.S. military announced Wednesday the grounding of all its Osprey CV-22 aircraft, one week after eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members died in a crash off the coast of Japan.

Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, directed the grounding "to mitigate risk while the investigation continues," the command said in a statement. The military said that the "standdown" of the Osprey CV-22 aircraft will "provide time and space" for a thorough investigation and to ensure a safe return to operations.

The extraordinary decision to ground the entire fleet of Ospreys came after a preliminary investigation revealed that a material failure was the cause of the devastating crash — not a mistake by the crew. In a release, the Air Force Special Operations Command said that the underlying cause of the failure was still unknown at that time.

The military did not immediately say when the fleet would be back in commission.

Fox News

“The US military's V-22 Osprey has been approved to return to flight, three months after an 'unprecedented' part failure led to the deaths of eight service members in a crash in Japan, Naval Air Systems Command announced Friday.
……
Before clearing the Osprey, which can fly like an airplane and then convert to a helicopter, officials said they put increased attention on its proprotor gearbox, instituted new limitations on how it can be flown and added maintenance inspections and requirements that gave them confidence it could safely return to flight.
……
'This is the first time that we´ve seen this particular component fail in this way. And so this is unprecedented,' said Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, V-22 joint program manager at Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, which is responsible for the V-22 program servicewide.
……
The proprotor gearbox system as a whole is a recurring trouble spot for the Osprey. …”

DailyMail article:
https://mol.im/a/13173571

Still waiting for the report on the crash that killed my neighbor off the coast of Australia on Aug 27, 2023.

So… bring back the Chinook full time? Is there another alternative aside from multiple smaller airframes like Blackhawks etc?

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
So… bring back the Chinook full time? Is there another alternative aside from multiple smaller airframes like Blackhawks etc?

Blackhawks and Chinooks have a hot-production line running, and they've got a healthy backlog of orders to fulfill.

USMC could've gone with the Blackhawk waaaay back in the late-70's, but opted for parts commonality with the AH-1 Cobra/Super Cobra/Viper (not a unreasonable reason) and at the time, a complete USMC squad could not fit into a Blackhawk, thus they stuck with the UH-46 Sea Knight; reliable but dated platform.

The V-280 can't come soon enough....USMC needs to be considering a maritime version.