The Navy Needs to Buy More CMV-22B Ospreys
By Dan Gouré
June 20, 2023
For decades, the U.S. Navy has relied on specialized aircraft to move personnel, spare parts, and critical materials to and from its aircraft carriers. Aerial movement of people and material is one of the reasons why the Navy can operate carrier strike groups at sea and in combat for protracted periods.
The Navy’s current platform for the carrier onboard delivery (COD) mission, the tiltrotor CMV-22B Osprey, is a variant of the MV-22 Osprey aircraft that the Marine Corps has been flying successfully for more than fifteen years. The ability of the V-22, the generic version of this platform, to take off and land like a helicopter but fly like an airplane gives it a unique mission profile. Before the Navy turned to the V-22 for the COD mission, the Marine Corps had flown the aircraft for hundreds of thousands of hours and employed it in combat in Southwest Asia. The MV-22 has proven extraordinarily useful to the Marines as a troop transport and resupply platform. With its speed and ability to land on a dime, the MV-22s also are useful for additional missions such as search and rescue and medical evacuation.
The Navy’s CMV-22B has been characterized by at least one knowledgeable source as a “game changer.” This is attributed to the platform’s long range, improved internal fuel storage, aerial refueling capability, and ability to operate from small, unimproved airfields. In addition, because it takes off and lands vertically, the CMV-22B does not impact other flight operations on the carrier’s deck. The CMV-22B obviates the need to reload supplies on conventional helicopters to move material from the carrier to other ships in the battle group.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/06/20/the_navy_needs_to_buy_more_cmv-22b_ospreys_941764.html
