Word: pilots
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...also kill a lot of Marines while doing little of note on the battlefield. Since 1971, more than a third of Harriers have crashed, killing 45 Marines in 143 accidents. But there's a critical difference between the two warplanes. Each Harrier carries a single pilot, nestled into an ejection seat with a parachute. But after all the debate about tilt-rotor technology - after all the vested interests have argued their case and all its boosters and critics have had their say - this much we know: within days, a V-22 will begin carrying up to 26 Marines into combat...
...Marines contend that the V-22 is an assault aircraft and that no pilot who finds himself dodging bullets is going to fly it gently. "The airplane is incredibly maneuverable," says Lieut. Colonel Anthony (Buddy) Bianca, a veteran V-22 pilot. But the dirty little secret about an aircraft that combines the best features of an airplane and a helicopter is that it combines their worst features too. The V-22 can't glide as well as an airplane, and it can't hover as well as a helicopter. If a V-22 loses power while flying like an airplane...
...That prospect doesn't concern some V-22 pilots, who believe they'll have the altitude and time to convert the aircraft into its airplane mode and hunt for a landing strip if they lose power. "We can turn it into a plane and glide it down, just like a C-130," Captain Justin (Moon) McKinney, a V-22 pilot, said from his North Carolina base as he got ready to head to Iraq. "I have absolutely no safety concerns with this aircraft, flying it here or in Iraq...
Faced with killing the program - or possibly killing those aboard the V-22 - the Marines have opted to save the plane and have largely shifted responsibility for surviving such a catastrophe from the designers to the pilots. While the engineers spent years vainly trying to solve the problem, pilots aboard a stricken V-22 will have just seconds to react. But tellingly, pilots have never practiced the maneuver outside the simulator - the flight manual forbids it - and even in simulators the results have been less than reassuring. "In simulations," the flight manual warns, "the outcome of the landings varied widely...
...Marines saluted, awarding a $45 million contract in 2000 for the development of a swiveling triple-barreled .50-cal. machine gun under the V-22's nose, automatically aimed through a sight in the co-pilot's helmet. "All production aircraft will be outfitted with this defensive weapons system," the Marine colonel in charge of the program pledged in 2000. The weapon "provides the V-22 with a strong defensive firepower capability to greatly increase the aircraft's survivability in hostile actions," the Bell-Boeing team said. But the added weight (1,000 lbs., or 450 kg) and cost...