WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, December 12, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Reserve Organization of America commends the decision made Dec. 6 to ground all Osprey CV-22 aircraft pending operational safety investigations.

The decision was announced just one week after ROA wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin calling for the aircraft’s immediate grounding.

“ROA thanks the secretary of defense, and the secretaries of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps for grounding the Osprey,” said ROA’s executive director, retired Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey E. Phillips. “Ensuring the safety of this aircraft, and future tiltrotor capabilities, is vital to military readiness and the lives of our precious servicemembers. ROA looks forward to learning the results of these safety investigations. With their findings, we urge the Pentagon to be transparent with the American people who fund and furnish the crews for this aircraft.”

ROA sent its Nov. 29 letter to Secretary Austin in direct response to the aircraft’s fatal crash in Japan, which claimed the lives of at least seven, and likely all eight, of the Air Force crew.

“How many more young warriors will die and be injured,” Phillips wrote, “some horribly, before we admit the problem and do the right thing?”

To date, 16 Ospreys have been damaged beyond repair in accidents that have killed more than 60 people. Four crashes killed 30 people during testing from 1991 to 2000. While some crashes have been attributed to pilot error, since the V-22 became operational in 2007, 12 crashes, including two in combat zones, and several other accidents and incidents have killed 33 people.

In grounding the Osprey, the Pentagon has at last done right by its men and women in uniform and their families. Any resumption of the Osprey’s use must be prefaced by systemic fixes and not mere training directives to crews, such as we have seen, with disastrous effect.

Future decisions regarding the use of this aircraft must be guided by a recognition that tiltrotor technology, while beguilingly advantageous, has yet to prove reliable.

Matthew Schwartzman
Reserve Organization of America
mschwartzman@roa.org
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