V-22 Will Not Be Fully Mission Capable Until Mid-2025, Navair Chief Says

The Bell Boeing V-22 fleet will not be fully mission capable until mid-2025 at the earliest as the aircraft return to flight with strict restrictions and tests of a new clutch are beginning, the commander of Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) says.

Rear Adm. Carl Chebi told lawmakers during a June 12 House Oversight Committee hearing that full operations are still about a year away. That leaves a large hole in operational capability for all three services that fly the tiltrotor.

Aircraft in the entire V-22 fleet are currently not able to fly more than 30 min. from a divert field as part of a return-to-flight plan announced in early March. Each of the services is taking a different approach. U.S. Marine Corps MV-22s are deployed for exercises in Australia and Sweden. Meanwhile, a small number of U.S. Air Force CV-22s at one base are cleared to fly and doing so sparingly.

The Oversight Committee put the V-22 program under the microscope during the June 12 hearing, which was attended by family members of several Marines and airmen killed in recent crashes. Over the past 2 1/2 years, four V-22s have crashed, killing 20 service members. Privileged Safety Investigation Board inquiries into the two most recent accidents—the Aug. 27, 2023, crash of an MV-22 in Australia and the Nov. 29, 2023, crash of a CV-22 off Japan—have been completed, but the public reports have not been released.

Chebi, whose Navair oversees the V-22 program office and is airworthiness director for the fleet, said that since the lifting of the grounding bulletin, Ospreys have flown more than 7,000 hr. as of June 2. The command, along with other V-22 operators, has looked at issues with the Osprey’s parts along with training, maintenance and operational changes to address fleet safety.

Navair is redesigning the Osprey’s clutch in an attempt to fix a long-standing problem of hard engagements that have plagued the fleet since 2010. The issue was linked to a June 2022 MV-22 crash that killed five Marines. Following that accident, the clutch’s input quill assembly on the entire V-22 fleet has been replaced every 800 hr.

Gary Kurtz, Navair’s program executive for air, antisubmarine-warfare and special-mission programs, says the command is progressing on the new design, with testing expected in the next couple of months. Fielding is planned in mid-2025. The Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget request calls for replacements in fiscal 2026, with the goal of finally purging the aircraft of problematic thin-dense chrome. This issue has caused metal to chip into the Osprey’s oil system and been linked to mishaps.

The budget calls for 45 kits to be procured in 2026, with the full program costing $138 million for 328 kits.

Despite the planned changes, lawmakers and family members expressed concern about the fleet’s safety and its needs going forward. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) called on the Pentagon to keep the fleet grounded until the clutch replacement is cleared and installed, adding that if another V-22 crashes in the meantime “your whole program is done.”

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former U.S. Army brigadier general and aviator, raised the unlikely idea of replacing the V-22 fleet with other helicopters, such as the Sikorsky CH-53K and Boeing CH-47.