The US military has lifted the grounding guidance for the military’s V-22 Osprey fleet, roughly three months after the entire fleet was grounded following a deadly Air Force Special Operations crash off the coast of Japan. The Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy are expected to begin flying their V-22 variants in a phased approach over the next several weeks.
The military-wide grounding of V-22 aircraft in December came a week after eight airmen were killed when their CV-22 crashed off the coast of Yakushima Island, Japan — as well as a number of other deadly crashes over the last few years. Military officials said in a series of briefings on Wednesday that they had confidence in returning the Ospreys to the air after an Air Force investigation identified the “materiel failure” responsible for the crash.
“There is nothing more important to me than safety of our air commandos and the joint force in which we support. … I have high confidence that the protocols we’re putting in place will avoid a catastrophic event like this happening again in the future,” Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, told reporters. “But I never say things with a finality, because there is an inherent risk of what we do in military operations.”
Bauernfeind said the Accent Investigation Board — which investigates all of the facts and circumstances around an accident and produces a publicly releasable report outlining the details — is still ongoing.
Col. Brian Taylor, the program manager of the Naval Air Systems Command V-22 joint program office, told reporters Wednesday that while NAVAIR was rescinding its grounding guidance for the V-22 and implementing various maintenance and procedural changes to mitigate any further issues, it was up to each service to determine how that guidance…
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