Bell Boeing wins $10.4B Osprey contract

Dallas Business Journal ^ | 3/28/2008 | Unknown

[HEY4QDEMS]

The Department of Defense has awarded Bell Helicopter and partner The Boeing Co. a five-year, $10.4 billion contract to make 167 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

The contract includes 26 CV-22 aircraft for the Air Force Special Operations Command and 141 MV-22 aircraft for the U.S. Marine Corps. The contract includes an option for additional aircraft.

The fuselage for the V-22 is built by Boeing Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia. Bell builds components for the aircraft in Fort Worth and completes final assembly at its Military Aircraft Assembly Center in Amarillo.

The V-22 is a tiltrotor aircraft with proprotors and engines installed in nacelles at the tips of both wings. With the nacelles in the vertical position, the V-22 can take off, hover and land like a helicopter. With the engine nacelles in the horizontal or forward position, the V-22 can fly at more than 300 miles per hour with the long range of a fixed-wing turboprop airplane. The Marine Corps base in Al Asad, Iraq, is using 12 MV-22 aircraft for combat operations.

Bell Boeing is a strategic alliance between Fort Worth-based

[HEY4QDEMS]

If Time magazne wants to rant about two accidents involving prototypes that happened almost 8 years ago, they're wasting their ink.

[Bernard]

Low bid/best bid, or something to offset the tanker deal and keep Boeing quiet for a while?

[ryan71]

“The V-22 is a tiltrotor aircraft with proprotors and engines installed in nacelles at the tips of both wings.”

These friggin writers kill me.

He assumes the reader knows what “nacelles” and “proprotors” are but have no idea what a V-22 is.

[sit-rep]

ain’t no different than some of the writers around here... using big words lets the readers assume they are more intelligent...

[Tribune7]

I think it’s more likely that it has been seen in action and the military has decided it likes what it sees.

[Boundless]

> If Time magazne wants to rant about two accidents
> involving prototypes that happened almost 8 years
> ago, they’re wasting their ink.

True, but if they want to rant about the engine TBO,
they have a case. There was a report this week that
the engines are “lasting” less than 500 hours, and
less than that in Iraq. Compared to typical turbines
(or even piston engines), this is awful.

This may just be an issue just with the present engines,
or it may be a result of the demands of tilt-rotor ops.

[Delta 21]

Is that a prop-rotor or a propeller? Iv never seen a proprotor before.(?)

[battlecry]

Don’t know either. There was a harrowing experience ferrying one over the pond. I believe one engine failed on the way to Europe.

[battlecry]

It is marketing hype. Props. No swashplate.

[atomicweeder]

Consolation price for losing the tanker deal.

[Thermalseeker]

This may just be an issue just with the present engines, or it may be a result of the demands of tilt-rotor ops.

There was a pair of Osprey's that flew into CHA a couple of months ago. One of them had some sort of mechanical difficulty and wound up being left there on the tarmac for 3+ weeks. A lineman at CHA told me that he helped the crew tie it down before they left and they were complaining about how much of a "piece of crap" the V-22 is, mechanically speaking. Apparently, this wasn't the first time they'd been stranded because of mechanical difficulties.....

[A.A. Cunningham]

It is marketing hype. Props. No swashplate.

Incorrect on all counts. The design is a hybrid of a prop and a rotor hence the name proprotor. The Osprey is equipped with six swashplates, one for each proprotor.

[A.A. Cunningham]

There was a report this week that the engines are “lasting” less than 500 hours, and less than that in Iraq.

I'd appreciate the link to that report.

[A.A. Cunningham]

There was a harrowing experience ferrying one over the pond.

Hardly.

I believe one engine failed on the way to Europe.

One engine, which was not equipped with de-icing equipment, experienced compressor stalls flying in icing conditions; said engine successfully restarted after all occurrences, and the crew decided to divert to Iceland as a precaution. After arriving in England the aircraft commander said that if he had to do it over again he would have continued the trip without diverting.

[Boundless]

> I’d appreciate the link to that report.

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/v-print/story/536059.html

“The average engine life span for the entire MV-22 fleet
is 420 hours, only slightly higher than the 380-hour
average for the Ospreys in Iraq.”

This is legacy media, alas.
For example, “life span” is vague and undefined.

Got any idea what Sikorsky is on about with their:
http://www.sikorsky.com/sik/innovation/x2_technology.asp

[A.A. Cunningham]

Low bid/best bid, or something to offset the tanker deal and keep Boeing quiet for a while?

No. This deal had been in the works prior to Boeing losing the tanker contract. Pen has finally been put to paper.

[Tribune7]

ping

[A.A. Cunningham]

Thanks. I knew Rolls Royce was complaining about losing money on the Power-By-The-Hour deal and wanted to renegotiate but I hadn't seen actual numbers on hours. I had heard through the grapevine that the engines on VMM-263s birds at Al Asad were actually accumulating more time prior to overhaul than those here in CONUS.

Sikorsky is trying to overcome the performance limits that rotary winged platforms have always been saddled with - retreating blade stall. Piasecki has modifed a Blackhawk in attempting to do the same.

[Doe Eyes]

Is that a prop-rotor or a propeller? Iv never seen a proprotor before.(?)

Google it. Seems to be a common term.

[usmcobra]

The average cycle of phased maintenance on Helicopters is about 100 flight hours, there are four phases in an aircraft’s cycle of maintenance meaning that roughly every 400 hours every filter and o ring and consumable part on the aircraft gets changed due to phased maintenance.

So what does that have to do with engine life, well to normal complete a cycle of phase maintenance can take as long as a year or more for an individual aircraft based upon flight operations. In real time, based upon flight hours accumulated 400 hours is a long time, I should know as an Aircraft maintenance Controller in the Marines it was my job to ensure that aircraft were used according to the number of flight hours they had until the next phase so that they were not over flown and were unavailable due to phase maintenance.

400 hour between engine changes seems short to the average citizen with no experience with aircraft and especially so for those that have no experience with rotorcraft. It should be noted as well that certain russian helicopters had a total life expectancy of only 1000 hours on their airframe before they were unflyable.

I wonder how many hours The Marines are getting between engine changes on their CH-46’s, those engines most of which were built originally in the early 60’s have to have at least 7000 total hours on them and have been built and rebuilt to the point where they now have severe limitations on the aircraft because the engine are no longer capable of producing the power they once provided.

In closing let me say that if I had to change an Osprey engine every 380 flight hours, to do so is a cheap price for the safety of our Marines and their aircraft, because the engines get rebuilt and sent back usually better then they were.