Osprey learning sea borne deployment

The crew of the US Bataan and its Marine air wing have become the Navy’s premier experts at operating the MV-22 Osprey aboard ships, mostly by making it up as they go along.

“It’s always something new, different and unexpected,” said Cmdr. Dan Olson, the ship’s air boss. “We are constantly trying to figure out stuff we don’t have published guidance for, and we’re always writing notes, e-mails off to spread what we know.”

When the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit sailed in May, they became the first ARG and MEU to deploy with Ospreys only — and none of the Corps’ old-standby CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and his entourage climbed aboard one of Bataan’s 10 Ospreys on Aug. 7 in Kuwait to experience the rocket-ship liftoff and silky fixed-wing flight out to the underway Bataan.

Olson said the ships in the ARG have become good at working the Ospreys into air operations, but unexpected things still crop up. “It can slow down operations, it’s cumbersome, it takes up more space on the flight deck than other aircraft,” he said.

Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 and the crew of the Bataan have added more safety observers to keep an eye on the Ospreys and the flight deck crew members who work under the cyclonic downwash from their massive rotors.

Managing Ospreys on Bataan is just one part of the challenge. The tiltrotors also must take off and land from the other ships in the ARG, both of which have much smaller flight decks than Bataan. Capt. Sara Faibisoff, an Osprey pilot with VMM-263, said the small-deck gators could accommodate two Ospreys comfortably.

“It’s not that bad at all,” she said. “You make a slow approach, put it down and there’s plenty of space.”

The main difference with landing on small-deck gators is the damage its engine exhaust does to flight decks. An Osprey’s twin nacelles blast heat downward when a V-22 is in helicopter mode. Crew members aboard the small-deck amphibs have taken to setting up metal pads, known as “hot plates,” underneath the nacelles while an Osprey’s engines are running on the flight deck.

“We touch down, they run them in, and then they take them away before we launch,” Faibisoff said.

The Osprey had many skeptics aboard this ship and in Iraq’s western Anbar province, where it deployed last year, because of the controversy surrounding the aircraft’s quarter-century of development, its high cost, and crashes that killed more than two dozen Marines.

“When we were first flying up there, people didn’t want to fly in them — they were scared,” Faibisoff said. “It takes getting used to.”

 

Eye in the Sky – Proteus

Proteus fitted with scanning instrument pod

Eye’s in the Sky just keep getting more sophisticated, with better scanning power and longer times aloft. Now here comes one that can by manned by a crew or serve as an unmanned UAV.

The Proteus is a unique aircraft, designed originally as a high-altitude, long-duration telecommunications relay platform with potential for use on atmospheric sampling and Earth-monitoring science missions [z - it's the "earth monitoring" part that I'll bet has the DARPA boys drooling}.

Designed by Burt Rutan, president of Scaled Composites, LLC, of Mojave, Calif., Proteus is an “optionally piloted” aircraft ordinarily flown by two pilots in a pressurized cabin. However, it also has the capability to perform its missions semi-autonomously or flown remotely from the ground.

The Proteus is actually a multi-mission vehicle, able to carry various payloads on a ventral pylon. An extremely high-efficiency design, the Proteus can orbit a point at over 65,000 feet (19,800 m) for more than 18 hours. It is currently owned by Northrop Grumman. Its unique design allows Proteus to be reconfigured for a variety of missions such as atmospheric research, reconnaissance, commercial imaging, and launch of small space satellites. It is designed for extreme reliability and low operating costs, and to operate out of general aviation airports with minimal support.

Proteus has an all-composite airframe with graphite-epoxy sandwich construction. Its wingspan of 77 feet 7 inches is expandable to 92 feet with removable wingtips installed. Proteus is 56.3 feet long, 17.6 feet high and weighs 5,900 pounds empty. Proteus is powered by two Williams FJ44-2 turbofan engines, each rated at 2,300 pounds of thrust.

A small Airborne Real-Time Imaging System (ARTIS) camera, developed by HyperSpectral Sciences, Inc., under NASA’s ERAST project, was demonstrated during the summer of 1999 when it took visual and near-infrared photos from Proteus while it was flying high over the Experimental Aircraft Association’s “AirVenture 99″ Airshow at Oshkosh, Wisc. The images were displayed on a computer monitor at the show only moments after they were taken.

In the Proteus Project, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, is assisting Scaled Composites, Inc., Mojave, California, in developing a sophisticated station-keeping autopilot system and a Satellite Communications (SATCOM)-based uplink-downlink data system for aircraft and payload data under NASA’s Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) project.

Flight testing of the Proteus, began in the summer of 1998 at Mojave Airport and continued  through the end of 1999, included the installation and checkout of the autopilot system, including the refinement of the altitude hold and altitude change software.

Proteus flew three piloted missions for NASA in 2000, testing payloads for new satellite instruments for the US Defense Department and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scaled Composite pilots also set a payload-to-altitude record in the Proteus in 2000, wearing pressure suits borrowed from NASA as a precaution against decompression at high altitude. They reached an altitude of about 19 kilometers (63,000 feet), an impressive testimonial to the aircraft’s capabilities.

After these initial successes, the has not been much more activity but his unique aircraft remains another of Scaled Composites desgin victories. With the current explosion of work in UAVs and UCAVs there may be some many choices available and so much data being generated that it will take time for the victors to sort out.