Osprey airmen expect to deploy within months

[unhappycamper]

Osprey airmen expect to deploy within months
By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 14, 2008 6:59:01 EDT

Although there have been no orders to send Air Force Ospreys to the war zones yet, the airmen who fly and fix the tilt-rotor aircraft are anticipating they’ll be there in a matter of months, not years. And when the airmen do get the orders , they’ll leave with lessons learned from the Marine Corps’ experience flying Ospreys in the desert.

“We feel we’re ready today,” said Lt. Col. Eric Hill, who has logged about 400 hours flying Ospreys and serves as the operations officer for the 8th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

The 8th, the Air Force’s lone combat CV-22 squadron, is expecting its fifth Osprey in the near future. The 71st Special Operations Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., is the CV-22 schoolhouse, which flies four aircraft. Eventually, the Air Force will own 50 Ospreys.

When the Marines dispatched 10 MV-22s to Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq in October, Air Force Special Operations Command sent Hill, who was already going to be in Iraq on a staff assignment, to spend time with the leathernecks. A senior enlisted Air Force maintainer went with him.

Hill said the most important lessons gleaned from the Marine deployment dealt with the nuts and bolts of operating in austere conditions, at the end of a supply chain.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/05/airforce_osprey_deploy_051308w/




uhc comment: Psssst. Each of these suckers cost $59,880,239.52 a pop --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=12904

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. psst. don't use the word "pop" when referring to them.

They have no armor, they are inherently unstable, they are priced way too high for the level of performance they give, they even downgraded every minimum performance requirement so they could make this beastie meet the "target". Think of Hillary and the goalposts, and you get an idea about this monstrosity.