https://www.military.com/daily-news...eys-aircraft-faces-uncertain-future.html

sample quote

Plans to fly the aircraft for another few decades mean that the services will have to solve the "hard clutch engagement" problem -- a situation where a failure by the aircraft's complicated system of gearboxes and clutches to balance the power produced by its twin engines causes dramatic and dangerous issues. Thus far, military officials have indicated the problem seems to be tied to flight hours and wear and tear.
snip
The military has not gone into how much money the repairs or new fixes to the gearbox would cost, but Military.com reported on a 2017 incident involving an Air Force Osprey when the failure occurred mid-flight over Arizona and the aircraft had to make an emergency landing in Flagstaff on one engine.

That incident, which damaged both engines and five gearboxes, as well as nearly a dozen other components, took a team of six, working 12-hour days, 45 days to repair the aircraft and cost more than $5 million, according to an incident report reviewed by Military.com.

To date, no crashes or fatalities have been attributed to the problem, although the cause of a deadly crash that claimed the lives of five Marines in June near Glamis, California, is still under investigation.

Last August, the V-22 Joint Program Office announced more than 24 different initiatives the services were undertaking to remedy and identify the hard clutch engagement issues. Those efforts included data mining, laboratory testing and hardware redesign, according to a Department of Defense spokesperson.
end quote

Well, that is just a single “bad apple” with all other gearboxes pretty reliable, right.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ping-home-to-florida-after-breaking-down

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The combining gear links the two main diesel engines on the Freedom class ships to a pair of gas turbines, which can provide additional power for its water jet propulsion system. This combined system is key to the ability of these ships to reach speeds of over 40 knots, which was a core requirement when the ships were under development. On diesel engine power alone, their top speed is only around 10 to 12 knots.
It's not clear how the combining gear failed in this case or when or where exactly the breakdown happened.
snip
This is not the first time a Freedom class LCS's combining gear has failed. In 2015, the USS Milwaukee
suffered a problem with this part of its propulsion system, while making its maiden voyage to Naval Station Mayport in Florida, where Detroit is also homeported.
The next year, USS Fort Worth had experienced a significant breakdown in its combining gear, as well. The Navy subsequently determined that incident to have been the result of a chain of errors by the crew that resulted in the system running for an extended period without critical lubricating oil.

end quote

Most recently the Navy has said they want to “retire early” a few early production Freedom Class Littoral Combat Ships ( LCS)
because they prefer a newly built ship with design improvements
to the cost of completely repairing the old ones.

Perhaps Moparts should send a member with extensive gearbox failure experience to inform the Navy about “Lifetime Drivetrain Warranty” advantages?

Should there be searches for hidden wooden shoes ( Dutch Sabots)
that when dropped into gearboxes, indicate a Saboteur lurks?

pretty interesting article. thanks for posting that.

and i was thinking the same thing about our well known "transmission tester" we have here !

If I'm remembering correctly the Marine Corp turn down using the V22 originally and then had to use them after politicians agreed to use them in both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
Helicopters can and do the job better on getting combat troops and combat gear into remote zones than the V22 can according to many commanders that have been ask about that aircraft
Who was and is getting paid for that action

When I was living in North Carolina the local papers had big stories about the V-22 Titanium hydraulic piping problems,
and once that information was out in the public,
current and ex military members of the Carolina Canoe Club felt “released”
and started telling stories around campfires during trips
about what their superiors had told them to be silent about.

When the V-22 has had “fixes” and is getting the hours of maintenance it requires,
it is indeed a “game changing” piece of equipment.

One Marine joked:

“Come on Marines, Ya think your gonna live forever! “

was what 1917 NonComs would yell to get
a WW-I charge across No Man’s Land started
toward enemy machine guns set in interlocking fields of fire.

Today we yell that
to get Marines to quickly board V-22s.

Someone will have to explain to me what the problem is. This looks like a conventional two engine turboprop. Why all the complexity in balancing engine power?

The V-22 is the "tilt-rotor" hybrid helicopter-airplane. If in forward flight you get a slight imbalance in thrust, you still go forward, but in a tandem-rotor helicopter, like the Chinook if you get different lift, you get serious problems immediately. When you're transitioning from lift to forward flight like the V-22, it's deadly. Then again, there's LOTS that is deadly about the V-22, as has bee said.

They were probably too busy attending non mission critical training sessions. Like when the investigation into one of the instances ship collisions revealed that navigation training had been sacrificed for other training.

I guess I should have joined the Marines...LOL.. There are several "old" issues that were never fixed on ancient things because the technology no longer exists or has been forgotten...

LCS is the acronym for Little Crappy Ships. We need frigates and cruisers, not speed boats.

We need to rapidly build military ships.

We have no Henry Kaiser owning Shipyards.

I can see no good solution,
but the least bad option
... ask South Korean shipyards to rapidly build us frigates and destroyers.

There was a moment when South Korea was in dire need of our help.

Now we are in need of South Korean (and other allies) help.

Not many actual warships in US Navy Reserve Fleet

quote

The Navy has been reducing the number of inactive ships, which numbered as many as 195 in 1997, but was down to 49 by the end of 2014.[1]

end quote

from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Inactive_Ship_Maintenance_Facility

Bush and Obama sank all of the Spruances and we're scrapping the Ticonderogas. There's nothing in the pipeline. One carrier is about ten Arleigh Burkes, which are getting long in the tooth.

I was stationed on a Spruance class. They were interesting ships. Stationed on a floating drydock for a while too.

Anyway, how we build ships today is similar to how they built Rolls Royces for decades, all hand built.

We need to build them like Beetles, assembly line. Kaiser had that down for the Liberty ships back in WWII.

With all the CAD/CAM today there is zero reason why they cannot be built modularly and assembled in a reasonable amount of time, at least for the small boys, not sure about carriers but even those can benefit from this at least some.

I was on USS Fletcher and USS Ticonderoga. Ingalls built them modularly if that's a word. They were fast and went to the scrap heap too soon.

So how much does an “improved” LCS” cost?

https://news.usni.org/2023/03/28/report-to-congress-on-constellation-class-frigate-program-ffg-62-13

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The Navy began procuring Constellation (FFG-62) class frigates (FFGs) in FY2020, and a total of four have been procured through FY2023, at a rate of one ship per year. Current Navy plans call for procuring a total of 20 FFG-62s.

The Navy’s proposed FY2024 budget requests $2,173.7 million (i.e., about $2.2 billion) for the procurement of the fifth and sixth ships in the program.

The Navy’s FY2024 budget submission programs the procurement of an additional six FFG-62s during the period FY2025-FY2028 in annual quantities of 1-2-1-2.

FFG-62s are being built by Fincantieri/Marinette Marine (F/MM) of Marinette, WI.
F/MM was awarded a fixed-price incentive (firm target) contract for Detail Design and Construction (DD&C) for up to 10 ships in the program—the lead ship plus nine option ships.

end quote

https://www.aol.com/news/us-military-grounds-entire-fleet-000140372.html

sample quote

The military announced late Wednesday it was grounding all of its Osprey V-22 helicopters, one week after eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members died in a crash off the coast of Japan.
...snip...
The crash raised new questions about the safety of the Osprey, which has been involved in multiple fatal accidents over its relatively short time in service.
Japan grounded its fleet of 14 Ospreys after the crash.
...snip...
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters in Tokyo the government has already formally requested that the U.S. military ensure the safety of Ospreys before their flights, but that Tokyo will seek further information from the U.S. side because it also affects the safety of Japan’s own Osprey fleet.

“Needless to say, ensuring flight safety is the top priority of aircraft operation,” Matsuno said. “Japanese Self-Defense Force also operate Ospreys, and in order to ensure their flight safety, we will continue to ask the U.S. side to share information with us.”
...snip...
In August, the Marines found that a fatal 2022 Osprey crash was caused by a clutch failure, but the root cause was still unknown. In its report on the crash, the Marines forewarned that future incidents “are impossible to prevent” without improvements to flight control system software, drivetrain component material strength, and robust inspection requirements.”

Air Force Special Operations Command has 51 Ospreys,
the U.S. Marine Corps flies as many as 400
and U.S. Navy operates 27.

end quote

Maybe the Japanese “with independent viewpoint” can figure out the “Hard Clutch Engagement” problem to keep their 14 safer.

This accident does not fit the earlier circumstances:

sample quote

The Osprey, assigned to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, was on a training flight when it crashed Nov. 29 off the southern Japanese island of Yakushima. It had departed from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture and was headed to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, but requested an emergency landing on Yakushima just before crashing off the shore.

Eyewitnesses said the aircraft flipped over and burst into flames before plunging into the ocean.

end quote

from

https://www.aol.com/news/air-force-grounds-entire-osprey-012102325.html

The Osprey has been a pos since it's inception. During testing a number of them crashed killing the pilots. They were becoming a dead issue until a newly retired MARINE commandant and maybe others, went to work for contractors. They in turn lobbied to get the CV22 pushed through Congress. There have a number of lawsuits by family members only to have the judge through them out. Are the judges bought off too?

60minutes did a story on them about 20 years ago.

Seems to me that this might be done better with a hydrostatic system.