Osprey readiness a challenge years after troubling report

The Marine Corps has made strides to improve standards for the MV-22B Osprey nearly two years after a report found unsettling evidence the service was deploying squadrons that were not mission-ready. But some problems persist due to high operational demand and a lack of resources.

An October 2013 Defense Department Inspector General report examining Osprey mission capability rates and readiness found, among other things, that the maintenance and ready status of V-22s at six squadrons was incorrectly or incompletely reported the majority of the time. The report, which was originally classified, was released through a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this month.

The investigators found that crews with the squadrons surveyed were marking the tiltrotor aircraft as ready to deploy even if they weren't, due to inadequate training of maintenance personnel and lack of oversight from commanders. As a result, senior Defense Department or Marine Corps officials "could have deployed MV-22 squadrons that were not prepared for missions," the report concluded.

The report also found that aircraft readiness ranged from 45 percent to 58 percent from fiscal 2009 to 2011, far short of the goal of 82 percent readiness.

During the two-year survey period, investigators found that:

Osprey maintenance personnel improperly recorded aircraft status information on 167 of 200 observed occasions.
Aircraft equipment condition was inaccurately recorded in 199 out of 265 readiness reports examined.
Reporting on the ability of a given unit to undertake its core mission was incomplete nearly half the time.
More than 12 percent of work orders examined were found to have been incorrectly prepared by maintenance personnel.
In one case, investigators found that maintenance personnel with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365, out of New River, North Carolina, replaced a dead battery for one of the tiltrotor aircraft. But the Osprey was reported fully mission capable for the two weeks before the fix, making it possible the aircraft could have been flown in unsafe conditions.

An Osprey from VMM-161, out of Miramar, California, had also been flown repeatedly, despite being restricted from flight operations, according to the investigation.

IG officials recommended that the Marine Corps require all Osprey maintenance personnel to complete mandatory training on readiness reports.

The investigators also said aircraft inventory reports and work orders should be tracked by the squadron to ensure accuracy and completeness; Marine commanders should sign off on readiness reports to verify their accuracy; and the Commander's Readiness Handbook should include detailed examples of how leaders should add comments to reports on the condition of Marine equipment.

The Marine Corps' response

Nearly two years since the investigation, readiness rates have improved significantly for the Osprey, said Maj. Paul Greenberg, a spokesman for Marine aviation at the Pentagon. The mission capable rate for the V-22 between July 2014 and June 2015 was 62 percent for stateside aircraft and 71 percent for deployed squadrons.

While Greenberg said the service does not have a process for measuring the accuracy of internal reporting, he said the Marine Corps has implemented more rigorous controls since the IG report's release.

"We have confidence in the professionalism of our Marine pilots and maintainers, but realize there is always room for improvement," he said. "A major component of improvement is enhancing our aviation maintenance training, to include better record keeping."

Greenberg said the Commander's Readiness Handbook, last updated in January 2014, streamlined procedures to improve quality control. Of the report's recommendations, he said the Marine Corps also implemented the following:

All Marines reporting to aircraft units and squadrons now attend required initial training.
Marines complete quarterly refresher training that is administered at the unit level.
The commander of U.S. Naval Forces implemented controls to ensure the accuracy and completeness of aircraft inventory readiness reports in September 2014 through a Navy Department-wide message. Those updates were added into unit-level refresher training.
Greenberg said the Marine Corps stands by its current, improved reporting procedures. However, an intense mission schedule that included more than 178,000 flight hours in support of combat operations since 2007 has left V-22 units straining to keep up with demand, he said.

"We have outstripped our ability to fully train our enlisted maintainers to the density per squadron needed to achieve maximum readiness," he said.

As the operational demand for Ospreys has surged, Greenberg said, "a combination of incomplete squadron transitions, reduced funding for maintenance and spare parts, and maintenance depot backlogs have led to an overall shortage of aircraft for the Marine Corps to train and deploy with."

Greenberg said all Marine aviation squadrons are participating in a plan designed to pinpoint readiness shortfalls and reset overtaxed aircraft. An independent review of the CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter just concluded in June, he said.

If the plan calls for changes to current policies and procedures, they could take months or years to be implemented, depending on the complexity of the issue, he said.