A while back we took a brief look at the V-22 Osprey, the new V/STOL aircraft designed to support USMC land warfare operations after the retirement of the service’s aging CH-46 helicopter fleet.

The Osprey has been 25 years in development, and shakeout testing and improving has cost the lives of 30 people and a large amount of money. The money had to be spent on something because the Marines’ CH-46 fleet dates back to the Viet Nam era, Our good friend Gordon remembers riding in 46’s on a few CAs during his participation in the South East Asian war games of 1963-1975. Gordon is old. Really, really old, and some of the Marines’ slicks are only slightly younger than he is.

The V-22 is pioneering new battle doctrine because of its unique ability to fly at up to 270 knots in an off-shore sprint to a landing zone, and then by rotating its engine nacelles, quickly convert to vertical flight to hover in to a landing in order to debark assault troops. It’s an entirely new type of flight, and in addition to developing this machine which has a 2007 fly-away cost of $70 million each, the Marines have had to write an new doctrinal manual for expeditionary support.

The first Ospreys were deployed to Iraq in October, flying in off a helicopter carrier. One just barely made it ashore.

BAGHDAD — The controversial V-22 Osprey has arrived in a combat zone for the first time.

It was an epic trip for the innovative tilt-rotor plane, one that took more than 25 years of development and cost 30 lives and $20 billion. Even the last short hop — from an aircraft carrier into Iraq — went awry, U.S. military officials said Monday.

A malfunction forced one of the 10 Ospreys that were deployed to land in Jordan on Thursday. The Marines flew parts to it from Iraq and repaired it. After it took off again Saturday, the problem recurred, and it had to turn back and land in Jordan a second time, said Maj. Jeff Pool, a U.S. military spokesman in western Iraq. It finally was repaired and arrived at al Asad Air Base in western Iraq late Sunday afternoon.

Two trips to repair the plane before it could be brought up to Iraq. Imagine that.

At the time I was a bit edgy about the matter, commenting that it was a good thing they got it ashore, and a lucky break that the engine fire extinguishers weren’t built by the same contractor who built the kitchen fire extinguishing system in the Baghdad Green Zone Embassy, our planned cornerstone for the 21st century American Empire.

I wish I’d never made that smartcrack about the fire extinguishers. Another case of life imitating art:

More than half of the Air Force’s small fleet of CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft are seeing only limited flight time while they await modifications to a faulty engine component that caused a fire in a Marine Corps version of the aircraft.

Four of the service’s seven Ospreys are being flown only “on an as-required basis,” while three have already been modified and are fully operational, said 1st Lt. Amy Cooper, a spokeswoman for Air Force Special Operations Command, which owns the aircraft.

Work on the remaining four aircraft should be complete “shortly after the new year,” Cooper said, allowing them to return to full service.

It might be expected the Marine V-22s are seeing harder service than the Air Force’s CV-22A models.

The modifications were ordered after a Marine Corps Osprey from Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., had to make an emergency landing due to an engine fire Nov. 6.

The faulty component, called the engine air particle separator, collects dust, dirt and debris that might find its way into the engine. [emph added]

The Army encountered the same sort of problems with the filtering systems on its AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and quite a few of them encountered unexpected down time during Gulf War I for the same reasons. It might be too difficult to make engine filters capable of screening out sand and grit. Or possibly man is just not meant to fly in the desert. Perhaps we should be looking into high-speed, low-drag, heavy-lift camels for our future Middle Eastern conquests.