V-22 News

Inside the Pentagon is reporting this morning that the Marine Corps is now committed to putting cockpit voice recorders on its fleet of MV-22 Ospreys for the first time since the requirement became law more than a decade ago, according to Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, the service's top aviation official. Moreover:

In a March 15 interview with Inside the Pentagon, Robling said he issued verbal guidance last week directing Marine Corps officials to program $10.3 million in the service's fiscal year 2013 budget plan for the technology. That new guidance from Robling, who became the deputy commandant for aviation in January, marks the first time the service has agreed to fund the capability since Congress mandated it for all Ospreys in October 2000.

ITP reported last December that the Defense Department had left the requirement unfunded for years and that the head Air Force investigator of the April 9, 2010, Osprey crash in Afghanistan said such a device could have helped conclusively prove the cause of the disaster. That prompted the House Armed Services Committee in recent days to press the Marine Corps and the Air Force to meet the statutory requirement.

"It's one of those [where] if you don't ask the question, you don't know what the problem is," Robling said, noting the problem came to light "based on the press article given to the members here. And we looked back and said yeah, there's a requirement."

In the decade since the need for the cockpit voice recorders became law in the Fiscal Year 2001 National Defense Authorization Act, the requirement did not successfully compete against other priorities in the military's long-term budget process, Robling said, adding there was "no forcing function" to make it happen. But now that the Marine Corps is funding the requirement, it could still take years to implement.

Assuming the $10.3 million makes it into the final version of the Pentagon's FY-13 budget request and that Congress approves the request, the Osprey program would start including cockpit voice recorders in new MV-22s in FY-17, Robling said.

Staffers on the House Armed Services Committee recently provided background and potential questions for tactical air and land forces subcommittee members regarding a March 14 hearing on fiscal year 2012 Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combat aviation programs. And it's clear, as above, that Inside the Pentagon's reporting is driving this effort forward:

The fiscal year 2012 request continues the MV-22 procurement in the fifth year of a five year multi-year contract. A second multi-year is being pursued to complete procurement of the program of record. The MV-22 Osprey continues to prove highly effective and survivable in combat in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps continues to replace its UH-1N and AH-1W helicopters with H-1 Upgrades aircraft, the AH-1Z and UH-1Y. According to the Marines, the deployment of the UH-1Y in combat has been extremely successful, and the AH-1Z achieved Initial Operational Capability on 25 February 2011. First deployment of the AH-1Z will occur with a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in November 2011, which will also be the first time the UH-1Y and AH-1Z deploy together.

A recent news article in Inside Defense highlighted the fact that the Department of Defense may have failed to put cockpit voice recorders on all its V-22s a decade after Congress put the requirement to do so in law. Section 129 of the Floyd D. Spence National Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 states that "The Secretary of Defense shall require that all V-22 Osprey aircraft be equipped with a state-of-the-art cockpit voice recorder and a state-of-the-art flight data recorder each of which meets, at a minimum, the standard for such devices recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board." Committee staff has engaged with the Marine Corps and Air Force to determine each service's plan going forward to meet the statutory requirement of equipping the MV-22 and CV-22 with voice and data recorders.

Here's related coverage from last week's issue of ITP:

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, plans to investigate why the Defense Department has failed to put cockpit voice recorders on all its V-22 Ospreys a decade after Congress put the requirement in law.

His inquiry comes after a December 2010 report by Inside the Pentagon that the department left the requirement unfunded for years and that the head Air Force investigator of the April 9, 2010, Osprey crash in Afghanistan said such a device could have helped conclusively prove the cause of the disaster.

"Based on your question, we will look into it," McKeon told ITP in a brief March 3 interview.

"Chairman McKeon and members of the committee are concerned about the lack of voice data recorders in our nation's fleet of V-22s," Josh Holly, McKeon's spokesman, added March 9. "The chairman has asked the committee's professional staff to engage with the Marine Corps and Air Force to determine each service's plan going forward to meet the statutory requirement of equipping the MV-22 and CV-22 with voice data recorders. That effort is currently under way."

Senate authorizers are also unhappy that the requirement has not been met. A congressional source said DOD had failed to comply with the law and that is a concern. The defense secretary "fell down on the job," the source said, griping that DOD was supposed to be "watching over this."

. . . And here's a snippet from the story that originally broke the news:

When an Air Force CV-22 Osprey loaded with troops crashed in Afghanistan eight months ago it lacked a required cockpit voice recorder that could have helped investigators conclusively prove the cause of the disaster:

The deadly crash came seconds after a heated conversation in the cockpit and a decade after Congress directed the Defense Department to equip all Ospreys with cockpit voice recorders. But Ospreys lack that capability today because DOD left the requirement unfunded for years, Inside the Pentagon has found. And while the Air Force recently made plans to put voice recorders on its CV-22s next year, the Marine Corps -- which flies most of DOD's Ospreys -- has no similar plans for its MV-22s, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

The April 9 crash killed four, injured 16 and destroyed a multimillion-dollar aircraft. In the darkness of early morning, the Osprey rolled on its landing gear for about 45 feet before the nose hit a small, two-foot deep, natural drainage ditch that flipped the aircraft tail over nose. The Accident Investigation Board, led by now-retired Brig. Gen. Donald Harvel, could not pinpoint the crash's cause. The CV-22's flight data recorder, which tracks aircraft parameters but not cockpit audio, was presumed destroyed when Air Force personnel unaware of its existence failed to retrieve it before bombing the wreckage on the battlefield. It would have been the best item to recover for the mishap investigation, Harvel told ITP in an interview.

But cockpit voice recordings, he added, could have turned the investigation into a "slam dunk" by revealing whether the pilot's final conversation concerned unexpected mechanical problems. The board concluded that engine trouble, crew errors and weather contributed to the mishap. Harvel maintains mechanical problems likely surfaced just before the crash, but Lt. Gen. Kurt Cichowski, who oversaw the investigation, disagrees.

"Having a cockpit voice recorder, I think, would have really shed some light on if that discussion was related to an aircraft mechanical problem that they were working, or if it was related to them being really fast and having this tailwind and discussing possible options on whether they needed to go around and reset up for the approach," Harvel said. "It would have definitely tilted [the investigation findings] either toward pilot error, loss of situation awareness or a mechanical malfunction that they were working. It would have been an absolute slam-dunk solution."