The Navy has selected the
V-22 as the next carrier delivery (COD) aircraft. Bell-Boeing has been given a $151M contract
to design the COD version of the plane, as described by a USNI website article
(1).
The funding, adding onto an
existing contract with Bell-Boeing, covers non-recurring engineering costs to
add extended range, high frequency beyond line-of-sight radio and a public
address system to the baseline MV-22 used by the Marine Corps.
The cost of this is
absolutely appalling. Bell-Boeing wants
$151M to add a radio, a public address system, and extended range
modifications? It ought to take about
ten thousand dollars of design work to add a radio. A public address system? Seriously?
That should cost about a thousand dollars of design effort. That leaves almost the entire $151M for
extended range modifications. Here’s the
thing, though, the Air Force’s CV-22 is already an extended range V-22. The extended range engineering has already
been done. The CV-22 has extra wing fuel
tanks and three auxiliary cabin tanks can also be added.
The Navy’s unrefueled range
requirement for the V-22 COD is 1150 nm (2).
The Air Force fact file
lists a combat radius for the CV-22 of 500 nm with one internal fuel tank. That means a one way range (which is what a
COD flight profile is) of 1000 nm.
The NavAir Navy fact file
lists a range for the CV-22 of 2100 nm with internal fuel tanks (number
unspecified). (3)
Wiki lists an MV-22 range of
879 nm and a ferry range of 1940 nm with internal auxiliary tanks.
Wiki cites the existing C-2
Greyhound COD as having a range of 1300 nm, for comparison.
Thus, the CV-22 already has
an unrefueled range that’s almost 1000 miles greater than the Navy’s
requirement. Of course, the max ferry
range requires internal fuel tanks which take away from the cargo capacity of
the aircraft but the CV-22 meets the range requirement with a single internal
fuel tank. Presumably, the CV-22’s wing
tanks offer sufficient range with no need for internal fuel tanks. The point is, the engineering has already
been done. Why are we giving Bell-Boeing
$151M to engineer something that has already been done?
Why?
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(1)USNI News website, “NAVAIR
Awards Bell-Boeing $151 Million To Begin Navy-Variant V-22 Design”, Megan Eckstein, April 1, 2016 ,
(2)USNI News website, “NAVAIR
Details Changes in Navy V-22 Osprey Variant”, Megan Eckstein, April 2, 2015 ,
