The V-22 Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter and flies forward like an airplane. DoD plans call for procuring a total of 458 V-22s. Contents of this report: (1) Intro.; (2) The V-22 In Brief; Intended Missions; Key Contractors; Total and Annual Procurement Quantities; Multiyear Procurement for FY2008-FY2012; Est. Total Program Cost; Prior-Year Funding; FY2010 Funding Request; Request for MV-22s; Request for CV-22s; Program History in Brief; Deployment to Iraq; Anticipated 2009 Deployment to Afghanistan; Foreign Military Sales; (3) Aircraft Reliability and Maintainability; Other Potential Issues; (4) Legislative Activity in 2009; May 21, 2009, Hearing on V-22 Program. Illustrations.
A fascinating and authoritative narrative history of the V-22 Osprey, revealing the inside story of the most controversial piece of military hardware ever developed for the United States Marine Corps. When the Marines decided to buy a helicopter-airplane hybrid “tiltrotor” called the V-22 Osprey, they saw it as their dream machine. The tiltrotor was the aviation equivalent of finding the Northwest Passage: an aircraft able to take off, land, and hover with the agility of a helicopter yet fly as fast and as far as an airplane. Many predicted it would reshape civilian aviation. The Marines saw it as key to their very survival. By 2000, the Osprey was nine years late and billions over budget, bedeviled by technological hurdles, business rivalries, and an epic political battle over whether to build it at all. Opponents called it one of the worst boondoggles in Pentagon history. The Marines were eager to put it into service anyway. Then two crashes killed twenty-three Marines. They still refused to abandon the Osprey, even after the Corps’ own proud reputation was tarnished by a national scandal over accusations that a commander had ordered subordinates to lie about the aircraft’s problems. Based on in-depth research and hundreds of interviews, The Dream Machine recounts the Marines’ quarter-century struggle to get the Osprey into combat. Whittle takes the reader from the halls of the Pentagon and Congress to the war zone of Iraq, from the engineer’s drafting table to the cockpits of the civilian and Marine pilots who risked their lives flying the Osprey—and sometimes lost them. He reveals the methods, motives, and obsessions of those who designed, sold, bought, flew, and fought for the tiltrotor. These stories, including never before published eyewitness accounts of the crashes that made the Osprey notorious, not only chronicle an extraordinary chapter in Marine Corps history, but also provide a fascinating look at a machine that could still revolutionize air travel.
The V-22 Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter and flies forward like an airplane. Department of Defense plans call for procuring a total of 458 V-22s, including 360 MV-22s for the Marine Corps; 50 CV-22 special operations variants for U.S. Special Operations Command, or USSOCOM (funded jointly by the Air Force and USSOCOM); and 48 HV-22s for the Navy.
This joint Bell and Boeing project was established in 1982 in response to the Joint Services Advanced Vertical Lift Program covering a wide performance envelope and multiple tasks. The answer came in the form of the V-22 tilt-rotor, a concept tested earlier by Bell with their 1977 XV-15. The transport aircraft style fuselage of the V-22, able to carry 24 troops, is topped by a wing with a complex flap/aileron system and two swivelling pods housing Rolls-Royce turboshaft engines, each driving enormous three-bladed prop-rotors. The intention was that the USAF would receive the CV-22B for special missions work, the US Marine Corps the MV-22B assault transports and the US Navy the HV-22B CSAR/fleet logistics version, but the technologically challenging program has been set back by fatal accidents and an 18 month grounding while flight safety issues were addressed.However, it is set to recommence a restricted development program with the intention that the production aircraft will begin to be delivered at the end of 2003 and gain initial operating capability by 2005, making this comprehensive new book a timely in-depth coverage of the aircraft.
This design guide was written to capture the author’s practical experience of designing, building and testing multi-rotor drone systems over the past decade. The lack of one single source of useful information meant that the past 10 years has been a steep learning curve, a lot of self-tuition and many trial and error tests. Lessons learnt the hard way are not always the best way to learn. This book will be useful for the amateur drone pilot who wants to build their own system from first principles, as well as the academic researcher investigating novel design concepts and future drone applications.
An extremely practical overview of V/STOL (vertical/short takeoff and landing) aerodynamics, this volume offers a presentation of general theoretical and applied aerodynamic principles, covering propeller and helicopter rotor theory for both the static and forward flight cases. Both a text for students and a reference for professionals, the book can be used for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses. Numerous detailed figures, plus exercises. 1967 edition. Preface. Appendix. Index.
