After 35 years in flight, the US military says it's done buying one of its most unique and controversial aircraft

• Since its first flight in 1989, the V-22 Osprey has provided a unique capability to the US military.
• Despite its development over the past three decades, the Osprey still faces mechanical issues.
• The Marines, Air Force, and Navy plan to fly Ospreys for decades, but they don't plan to buy any more.

The US military is the largest aircraft operator in the world, with more than 13,000 manned planes and helicopters of all types in service.

From cutting-edge stealth jets to heavily armed attack helicopters, as well as versatile cargo planes and voluminous tankers, the Pentagon has something for every type of aerial mission.

But the emergence of more capable rivals and the arrival of new technology means some of the US military's go-to aircraft are running out of time.

One of them is the V-22 Osprey, a unique and controversial aircraft that has carried conventional troops and special operators around the world for two decades.

The V-22 Osprey

In the three decades since its first flight, the V-22 Osprey has brought a distinct capability to the US military's aviation fleet, despite its troubled development.

The US military began the development of the Joint Services Advanced Vertical Lift Aircraft project in the early 1980s. The aim was simple but ambitious: create an aircraft that could fly with the speed, endurance, and operational ceiling of a fixed-wing aircraft but also had the flexibility to take off and land vertically.

The project produced what, at first glance, is a weird-looking aircraft. It has two main rotors that swivel, rising upward for takeoff and landing and turning forward for horizontal flight.

The first of six prototypes flew for the first time in helicopter mode in March 1989 and in fixed-wing mode in September 1989.

The program suffered setbacks, including several fatal crashes, as its development continued in the 1990s and early 2000s. It was also marred by rising costs and the aircraft's complex maintenance needs. In 2001, the US Marine Corps fired a V-22 squadron commander over allegations of falsified maintenance records.

The Marines received their first MV-22 in 1999 and deployed it to combat for the first time in 2007. The US Air Force began accepting its CV-22 variant in 2006 and deployed it for the first time in 2008. Not to be left out, the Navy got its variant, the CMV-22, in 2020 and deployed it for the first time in 2021.

Conventional and special-ops missions

For the Marines, the MV-22 replaced the CH-46 Sea Knight, a heavy-lift helicopter that had carried Marines and supplies since the mid-1960s. With a crew of four, the Osprey can carry up to 32 troops, which would translate to almost an entire Marine rifle platoon or two Navy SEAL platoons.

The Air Force's "C" variant has been a staple of the US special-operations community. It differs from the conventional V-22 in several ways, packing extra fuel tanks, a terrain-following radar, and a countermeasures system to increase its survivability.

The CV-22 has two primary mission sets — long-range infiltration and exfiltration and special-ops resupply — and it has played a key part in several known special-operations missions.

In 2013, CV-22 Ospreys carried Navy SEALs to assist the evacuation of US citizens from South Sudan, where a civil war had started. When they were preparing to land in the South Sudanese capital, insurgents opened fire and damaged one aircraft, seriously wounding four SEALs. The Osprey was able to fly straight to Kenya, where a special-operations surgical team was standing by to assist in the evacuations.

In 2021, SEALs from the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group — formerly known as SEAL Team 6 — used CV-22s to rescue and evacuate an American hostage from Nigeria. The aircraft flew from Nigeria all the way to Spain after completing the rescue.

Despite its maintenance problems, the CV-22's operational range, lift capacity, and speed make it a useful asset in the US special-operations arsenal. Recent upgrades to some of the CV-22 fleet are meant to ensure they can continue operating a high level for decades to come.

The Navy's CMV-22 is the newest variant. It is taking over the carrier onboard delivery role from the C-2 Greyhound and ferrying people, supplies, and cargo to aircraft carriers at sea. It demonstrated its capacity in early 2021, when it delivered an F-35 engine to a carrier in the Pacific Ocean.

"We're very bullish on CV-22," Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, told lawmakers in March. "It's been another example of one service leveraging what's been going right in another and at economies of scale, buying these aircraft as quickly as we can to replace an airframe."

End of the line

Now more than 400 Ospreys are in service with more than 600,000 flight hours since becoming operational. The V-22 is also in service with Japan's military, the first foreign force to operate it. Despite its progress and achievements, the Osprey has still struggled with mechanical problems.

In August 2022, Air Force Special Operations Command grounded its CV-22s over issues with its clutch, which had caused several "safety incidents." In February, all three services said they would ground some of their Ospreys to replace a component related to the clutch.

The problem is not new, with 15 such incidents over the past dozen years, but the military has struggled to determine its cause. The Pentagon is working with the manufacturer, Bell Boeing, to address the issue, but it may end up being the Osprey's final chapter.

While the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force plan to fly their Ospreys for decades to come, budget documents released by the services in March show that none plan to buy more of them, a sign that military leaders think they have as many Ospreys as they need.

"I don't see us actually going to additional CV-22s," Gen. Charles Brown Jr., the Air Force chief of staff, told lawmakers in April, "because once you shut down a production line, it's very expensive to start back up."

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master's degree in strategy and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies.