The most vulnerable phase of a helicopter’s flight in combat is during ingress and egress.
The advantage of the Osprey is that it dramatically shortens the time incoming and outgoing that it is susceptible to ground fire.
I will tell you from personal experience too, is that the Osprey is NOTHING like a helicopter with respect to knowing it is coming. I have spent a good part of my life around helicopters, watching them avidly both as a kid and serving in active duty, and you can hear every helicopter made from miles and miles away.
Their speed is so slow, and the beating of the rotors so loud that it is easy to pick up helicopters.
I had no such experience observing Ospreys, until last year. I was down on the beach on the Outer Banks in North Carolina with friends, when I heard an approaching aircraft...I turned to see an Osprey at about a thousand feet moving fast (they travel much faster than traditional helicopters) and I could not even get my camera out in time before the thing had passed and was far away.
I spend the next few hours watching a couple of these unusual aircraft pass by overhead over and over, flying at full speed at about 500-1000 feet, coming to a full stop, and dropping rapidly to the runway at a small civilian airfield.
Then, after they landed, they would lift off, and rapidly scoot away. No comparison to a standard helicopter. Those things would rise and move out, because in a helicopter, to really move out a maximum speed, they have to drop the nose and it takes a bit to get up to speed. Not the Ospreys. They move out far faster in a level attitude, only those large props changing their tilt.
I was astounded at the difference in sound between the Osprey and a helicopter, and how fast it was able to come in with nowhere near the flair needed coming in (helicopter tilts nose to the sky to decrease the footprint of the flair) and how fast it could lift off and move out.
That is why the USMC fought so hard and diligently to get the platform. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it isn’t a contest in ingress and egress.
I would be interested to hear from some Freepers who have personal experience.
Interesting. I’ve been skeptical of the thing for a long time and would need convincing. Granted it flies faster but it’s so darn complex...
You chopper jockeys are nuts!
Pump up yer own damn accumulators LOL, Auto rotation? No thanks
Taking off in the desert the rotor whips up a piezoelectric wind storm off the quartz sand...
It produces a purple halo of electric light.
Give my submarine and St Elmos Fire
They build those things around here. The Osprey is pretty agile for a rotorcraft as big as it is. As you note, they’re very fast, very quiet and they do insert and extract *very* well.
They also come with an optional ‘hideaway’ 7.62mm NATO Gatling gun aka the Minigun on a remotely operated hideaway belly turret that has a 180 degree hemisphere of fire as well as being able to mount a 7.62mm or .50 cal machine gun on a popup mount on the rear ramp. The minigun turret is called the Remote Guardian system, has a FLIR sensor, can be retracted into the belly and you can’t tell it has it unless you can pick out the outline of the hatch.
V-22 Osprey firing the GAU-16 .50 BMG ramp gun and the “surprise” retractable GAU-17 7.62mm Minigun turret: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgaxkv75aA