Air Force to deploy Ospreys in weeks as post-crash groundings lift
By Stephen Losey
Thursday, Sep 19, 2024
Air Force Special Operations Command has returned about 60% of its CV-22 Osprey fleet to fully operational flight status and expects to once again deploy the tilt-rotor aircraft to support combatant commands in a matter of weeks.
In a roundtable with reporters at September’s Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said the command is clearing about three Ospreys for flight operations every 10 days as it gradually lifts the fleet’s grounding.
AFSOC has roughly 50 CV-22s, and expects to have all its Ospreys back to normal flying operations by late 2024 or early 2025. Conley would not say where Ospreys are likely to deploy.
The military in December 2023 grounded all its V-22s, which are flown by AFSOC, the Navy and the Marine Corps, following the fatal crash of an Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan a week earlier. That crash killed all eight crew members aboard.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/09/19/air-force-to-deploy-ospreys-in-weeks-as-post-crash-groundings-lift/
