The US Navy has, in what I see as a monumentally boneheaded decision, decided to replace its ageing fleet of C-2 Greyhound COD airplanes with the V-22. It will mean MUCH less range (a third of the Greyhound's range in some cases), no ability to fly above the weather, and significantly reduced payload.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/stupid-...2940.1417589729

Yep, scratching my head on this one. I've rode in the back end of a few C-2's, including returning to the ship in a storm, and a big part of a carrier's mission is being able to operate in any weather, anywhere in the world. I could see the Osprey replacing the CH-46 in the cargo transport role, but my question is, is it small enough to operate from the decks of the Military Sealift Command's Combat Logistics Force ships that resupply the fleet. After all, if I remember correctly, they have their own SH-60 detachments to be able to resupply the smaller boys that sail with a Carrier Battle Group, but I'm guessing that a V-22 is too big to be able to easily land on the flight deck of a Tico or Burke.

This all sounds to me like somebody at the Pentagon is bucking for a star, or a job at Boeing when they retire.

It's going to be ok, John McClane is on board. He'll take care of everything.

The answer is simple--anything they pick other than a V-22 will cost more.
There is no way around it, military procurement is so miserably broken that if they wanted to take some other plane and navalize it or start a new program from scratch or even restart the C-2 line it would cost more than just buying a few more V-22s.
Don't say "but certainly a plane like X would cost less than a V-22". Yeah, maybe. But what about all the money spent BEFORE that on R&D, testing, costly upgrades to the C-2s to keep them flying as the program is delayed another 10 years...even if in the end they cost half what a V-22 does, the total program cost will blow right through that. Plus there are only 48 needed, too small a run to justify much of anything else, but enough to help lower the unit cost for all V-22s bought for the services.

The cheapest decision in military procurement is just to take something made for another mission and make it work for yours.


Having read that entire article now I see the author totally misses this point. Capability at any cost is not the way of things any more. His "use a V-22 instead of an E-2" comment is doubly stupid because of both the physical impossibility of putting a radome on a V-22 and the fact that the E-2C was still in production and the D didn't require all that much change.
If he honestly thinks the Navy is knowingly trading down for more money he's an idiot.


The Jedi Master

Heh, there's even Viper back behind him, there. What could go wrong?

This.

Add a whole new nightmare logistics line to the carrier group for less capability.

Retire or fire the whole bunch that made this decision.

The E-2 is still in production as the E-2D. Mate the C-2s fuselage to the new wings, engines and avionics, and there is an el cheapo solution right there.

Beat me to it, semmern. I was about to say the same thing. The similarities are so much so that there's only one Fleet Replacement Squadron for both C-2 crews AND E-2 crews. The comment about "put a radome on a V-22" was meant to be tongue in cheek, since the mission requirements for both airplanes make sense to be so similar:

Long range (or loiter time)
Large cargo/ carrying capacity (for obvious reasons)
All-weather operability

Not having these features in a Carrier On-Demand Delivery aircraft will seriously stymie the fleet. I can think of a couple of cases off the top of my head of being in blue-water operations where we wouldn't have been able to keep going if we hadn't been able to fly a critical spare part out to the ship, and waiting for our T-AOE to pull in to a nearby port just wouldn't cut it.

On a more personal note for me, there's one more mission that hasn't been mentioned either here on in the article: medevac. This coming Sunday will mark ten years that a good friend of mine was severely injured in an accident in one of the plants. We were carrying a full load of supplies, including perishables, from San Diego to Pearl as part of the Christmas Tsunami relief effort, and were just shy of halfway to Hawaii. Our CO turned the ship around, and after a couple of hours of answering a flank bell, we were in range for one of our C-2's to fly off and get Ben back to San Diego. He very nearly made it to Balboa, and actually died in the air in a helo from North Island to the naval hospital. The COD came back to the ship as soon as it had refueled and loaded Ben into the waiting helo, and was back on the ship not long after- and our arrival at Pearl, and much-needed supplies, weren't too badly affected.
Could the same thing have been said if we'd been carrying a pair of V-22's instead? I seriously doubt it.

So tl:dr, we were able to continue on and carry out our mission, despite a serious accident taking place aboard, because of the C-2. The V-22 will severely limit a carrier's ability to do this.

This was obviously during shooting for "Tears of the Sun"... Cole Hauser (in shades) is to the left of Bruce and Eamonn Walker is next to Viper.

-Skater

I wonder how they even plan to handle spares for the F-35 with an Osprey. The C-2, as is, was rumoured to be too small for one of those monster engines.

I do think that Jedi's explanation sounds realistic.

Except it's a new aircraft then. It needs testing, more testing, committee work, more appropriations bills, lobbying by 234 different congressmen to have it made in their district, slapped onto with pork spending to fund a bridge in Nebraska, and so forth.

Nothing these days is as simple as "simply slap X onto it", most definitely not in military procurement and in the end it'll cost 97 billion per plane.

It's simple - just keep the carriers within V-22 range of land, and make the fighter, strike, Growler, and tanker pilots fly much farther over open water to their targets.

I was going to say the same thing, Viper's in the house. I would like to have asked him to make an announcement to the passengers over the intercom. "Good morning gentleman, the temperature is 110 degrees"

That must have been when they made Tears of the Sun. Can't think of his name but the other actor to the right is there from Paparazzi.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't a bad idea. I can see where having an aircraft that can hop from carriers to LCS ships to anything else with a landing pad is not too shabby.

Granted, it might not be able to carry as much, but it would seem that it is more versatile than the C-2.

The other ships will need to be arranged like stepping stones. The MV-22 carries twice as much payload (20,000lb) as the C-2, but has only 2/3 the range (879nmi vs 1300.) I have no idea which is needed more often, payload capacity or unrefueled range.

The other point is that fewer H-60 flights will need to be made to distribute things from the C-2 to all the other ships, they can just unload what they need to on the carrier and then hop around.



The Jedi Master

No, they can't. From everything I've seen, the V-22 can't land on the decks of any other small boys aside from maybe the Gator Freighters.

Well it obviously can't land on a deck sized for an H-60, but it was built as a 46 replacement so I believe it was required to be able to land anywhere a 46 could.




The Jedi Master

Isn't the V-22 capable of in-flight refueling? I'm not sure how badly sling-loading reduces this capability, or if it can go fast enough to be refueled by a Super Hornet, but the base range of a V-22 can be extended (albeit with added logistical complexity).

Guess both the MV & CV can refuel