Unsat follow-ups

First off,  let’s chat about the V-22 Osprey. A while back the Air Force grounded all of theirs due to several in-flight incidents caused by what they called Hard Clutch Engagements (HCE) which essentially tear up the drive line to the rotors. No rotor spin, no fly.  The Marines, who also fly the V22, said their pilots were trained to handle such instruments  but then June 8 last year an HCE crash killed 5 Marines.

Despite a history of at least 15 such incidents between March 2010 and August 2022, “the root cause of HCE remains unknown,” Maj. Gen. Bradford Gering wrote in a March letter accepting the investigation results.

Gering wrote that the fix the Pentagon touted in February — replacing a part of the drivetrain called an input quill assembly — serves only to reduce the chance of this costly, and now deadly, issue from happening again.

Despite no clear understanding of what causes the problem, the office that runs the Osprey program for the Pentagon claimed in a statement released Friday that, “through a combination of efforts, including the recent input quill assembly replacement bulletin in February 2023, the risk of a HCE event occurring was reduced by greater than 99%.”

Seems the input quill assembly wears prematurely and after 800 hours of operation should be replaced  The August crash aircraft had over 2000 hours on its quill assemblies.

“By greater than 99%” – in other words, still a measurable problem.  Maybe the best news on this is that DoD says it has run through its planned acquisitions of V-22s and won’t be buying more.  (Compare and contrast, if you will, the still-flying C-47s and C-130s of the world. Or the Dorian Grey B-52. What have we lost along the way? I suspect the KISS principle is rearing its ugly head.

And then we get to politics. Alabama’s folks are having an outsized impact nowadays – involving two major controversies on headquarters siting and abortion issues.  Huntsville, AL was selected as the Space Command’s permanent headquarters – but ever since the Air Force has slow-rolled confirming that decision, reportedly due to a) pique that Colorado Springs wasn’t selected, b) Deep blue Colorado is hardly likely to endorse a Trump administration decision. Much less one Trump supposedly made personally.

“Space Force — I sent to Alabama,” Trump told the “Rick & Bubba” radio show at the time. “I hope you know that. [They] said they were looking for a home, and I single-handedly said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama.’ They wanted it. I said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama. I love Alabama.'”

After Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Military.com last week he was holding up military reprogramming requests over the Air Force’s much delayed decision on where to base U.S. Space Command, a committee spokesperson said Wednesday that the lawmaker has now allowed requests related to personnel funding to go through.

So at least Air Force personnel funding has been released. Now on the other side… Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-AL is blocking the processing of all O-7-up nominations. This includes both position and rank appointments. As an example, we have no confirmed head of the Marine Corps for the first time in over a century and a half. Why? Tuberville doesn’t like the Pentagon’s rules on paying for abortions for military members.  No transfers, no promotions until he gets his way.

Me, I am not wild about the Pentagon rules either, and past comments here indicate that many here are vehemently opposed to a far greater degree. Sure seems to me that there should be a better way to go about objecting, though, than to screw with the lives of folks who are most likely NOT the policymakers who set those policies.

 

 

 

Category: Air Force, Marines, Politics