Recent CH-46 Crashes Underscore Findings of Center Roundtable: The Tiltrotor Must Be Brought On-Line Quickly, Efficiently

(Washington, D.C.): The fatal crashes
of two CH-46 medium lift helicopters
within the past month should be a wake-up
call for all those who care about the
Nation’s security — and about the health
and safety of those who safeguard it.
These helicopters are the workhorses of
the U.S. Marine’s inventory. They are
relied upon to provide the combat
mobility so critical to the Corps’ power
projection mission by ferrying troops and
combat gear to and around the
battlefield.

The CH-46s have been in the inventory
for some thirty years and are facing
block obsolescence. Indeed, the recent
tragedies involving these assets —
including one that occurred on Saturday
in a routine training exercise off the
coast of San Diego, apparently killing
four crew members — may signal that that
dangerous point has already been reached.

Of course, the Marines have long
anticipated the need to modernize their
medium lift assets. For most of the past
fifteen years, they have sought to do so
with revolutionary tiltrotor technology
— a technology that permits vertical
take-offs and landings like helicopters,
but converts in-flight to fly like a
conventional turboprop plane at speeds
significantly in excess of any other
rotor aircraft. Until recently, however,
political machinations, funding
constraints and technical challenges have
combined to delay the introduction of the
replacement for the CH-46: the Marines’
remarkable MV-22 Osprey.

The good news is that the U.S. Navy
announced on 28 April 1997 the release of
$402 million to begin low-rate initial
production of five V-22
“Osprey” aircraft. The bad news
— as established in a high-level
Roundtable Discussion sponsored on 9
April 1997 by the Center for Security
Policy⁽¹⁾
— is that the current Pentagon
plan fails to provide for the timely and
efficient introduction of this aircraft
into the Marine inventory.

The summary of
this Roundtable entitled
“Tiltrotor Technology and ‘Joint
Vision 2010′: A New Way to Fly and to
Fight” and released today makes
clear that this shortcoming could have
grave repercussions for the Marines —
forcing them to choose between an
expensive service life-extension program
for the CH-46 fleet or a significant
degradation in combat readiness as older
CH-46s are retired without replacement.
Either way, the result would likely be an
unnecessary, undesirable and avoidable
decrease in the contribution made to the
national security by the Marine Corps. It
also could put once again at risk the
V-22’s future prospects, and with it the
defense manufacturing base upon which
U.S. market dominance of an extremely
promising new tiltrotor commercial
aerospace industry is expected to be
built.

Fortunately, Senate Appropriations
Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK)
pledged at the Center’s Roundtable
Discussion: “As long as I am on the
watch, V-22 will be on the front burner.
We’ve got to find the money to keep the
V-22 on schedule.”

The Center applauds Sen. Stevens’
commitment and urges him and two of the
leaders of the Senate and House
authorizing committees — Sen.
Robert Smith, chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee’s
Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and Rep.
Curt Weldon, chairman of the
House National Security Committee’s
Military Research and Development
Subcommittee, respectively — to use
their considerable influence to ensure
that the V-22 is put on a footing that
allows both more efficient rates of
production and a far more expeditious
replacement of the CH-46s. Such
an approach could not only save precious
defense resources — by some estimates as
much as 25% of the costs of the V-22
procurement⁽²⁾
; it could save an even more dear
currency, namely the lives of U.S.
service personnel.

– 30 –

1. See Center
Roundtable on Tiltrotor Technology
Resonates With Members of Congress,
Senior Military and Industry
(No. 97-P 52,
15 April 1997).

2. In a 9 May 1997
letter to Secretary of Defense William
Cohen, Webb Joiner, CEO of Bell
Helicopter Textron, Inc. — the company
responsible together with Boeing
Helicopters for producing the V-22
stated: “We are prepared to ramp up
production rates with funding for 12
aircraft in FY98, followed by 24 and 36
in 1999 and 2000 respectively….With
this orderly ramp up rate and a constant
multiyear contract arrangement, we feel
that cost savings approaching 25% can
result over the life of the
program.”