I am compelled to table this petition due to a personal concern. The impending retirement of the C-2 Greyhound fleet, an aeronautical workhorse of the US Navy, is a significant development that will impact many lives. Once retired, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft will take over its role, which brings a pressing issue to light: the safety record of the V-22 Osprey.

The C-2 Greyhound has served the US Navy for over sixty years, delivering personnel, mail, and cargo to aircraft carriers at sea. The safety and durability of the C-2 are well-recorded and unimpeachable. With it being phased out, the V-22 Osprey becomes the successor, a decision not devoid of controversy given its mixed safety record. According to the Naval Safety Center, from 2001 to 2017, the Osprey's crash rate per flight hour was three times that of the C-2. Despite advancements made, safety remains a legitimate concern.

What we demand is a full, independent review of the future of the Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft program beyond the C-2 Greyhound. This review should also incorporate a comprehensive analysis of the V-22 Osprey, addressing concerns over its safety record and implementing necessary measures to guarantee the security of on-board personnel moving forward.

Even before the entire fleet of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft was grounded following a fatal crash of an Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan in November, the Navy’s version was experiencing serious issues that limited its ability to fully perform its assigned missions. Those findings by the Pentagon’s top testing office come even though the Navy's former air boss called the CMV-22B a "game changer" after its first operational deployment in 2022. The Osprey grounding has also forced the Navy to resort to using its dwindling fleet of C-2A Greyhounds to perform essential Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) duties.

The CMV-22B was not operationally suitable due to failures of many subsystems, with the ice protection system accounting for 44% of the total operational mission failures,” the Pentagon's Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, or DOT&E, stated in its Fiscal Year 2023 annual report released last week.
 

Problems with the ice protection system are a significant concern for the CMV-22B, but there have been several potential drawbacks with having the aircraft take over the COD role since the program's inception. Those issues include a lack of cabin pressurization. Unless its passengers and crew are on oxygen, the Osprey has to fly at lower altitudes, through poorer weather, and over long distances, at turboprop-like speeds. Being that its destination can be far out to sea with no nearby divert field, that can include being forced to fly through highly inclement weather. There are other key advantages to having the CMV-22B on the COD mission, which we will discuss in a moment.

The 44% of mission failures due to problems with the ice protection system appears to be a significant increase from what was previously known.
As we noted in the past, in February 2023, as the Navy announced the CMV-22B had obtained its Initial Operating Capability (IOC), Bloomberg News reported that the aircraft wasn’t yet "operationally suitable." That was because it had only "partially met reliability requirements," the Pentagon’s testing office said in a non-public assessment. Among the problems was that the CMV-22's ice protection system “accounted for 25% of the operational mission failures, which will result in mission aborts."

The DOT&E report, released last Thursday, showed that the ice protection system failure was responsible for twice the rate of missions being scrubbed compared to the assessment cited by Bloomberg. We’ve reached out to NAVAIR, the Bell-Boeing Joint Office, and the Pentagon to find out more details. The Bell-Boeing joint venture company, which is the prime contractor for the V-22 family, deferred questions to NAVAIR.

The report did not specify which other subsystems were failing or whether they involve issues that led to previous groundings.
The CMV-22B is based on the Marine Corps’ MV- 22B design but with several changes to support the COD mission: increased fuel capacity to extend the range, fuel jettison system, integrated public address system for making announcements in the cabin area, high-frequency radio for over-the-horizon communications, and cabin and cargo lighting to assist with cargo loading.

The Communications Upgrade suite includes a Link-16 tactical datalink and an Iridium satellite phone to enhance capabilities when conducting logistics, search and rescue, and mobility missions as part of a Carrier Strike Group," the report stated.

The Osprey has a controversial history that has included some high-profile mishaps, though it is unknown at this point whether any of its previous problems involve the other subsystems DOT&E said failed.
As we previously reported, the Air Force grounded its CV-22Bs in August 2022 after one of the aircraft made an emergency landing in Norway. There were thankfully no injuries as a result of that mishap, which was traced to an issue with a hard clutch on the Osprey. 
Several months later, the Air Force, as well as the Navy and the Marines, grounded some of their Ospreys again in February 2023 over concerns with aircraft’s hard clutch.
The entire fleet of V-22 was grounded Dec. 6, 2023, after the Nov. 29, 2023 crash off the coast of Japan that killed all eight aboard. 

Ospreys have suffered a number of serious accidents, some of which have been fatal and some that have been linked to other materiel issues, since the aircraft first flew in 1989 and entered military service in 2007 There have been three fatal Marine MV-22B crashes just since March 2022. The March 2022 crash was subsequently determined to have been caused by pilot error, while a crash that followed in June of 2022 was attributed to the hard clutch problem. The most recent Marine Osprey mishap, which occurred in Australia in August 2023 remains under investigation. There have been numerous other fatal Osprey mishaps over the years.
It's still unclear what problems led to the current Osprey grounding.
"We don’t believe the most recent problems are related to the hard clutch engagement issue, but we will not know definitely until the investigation is complete," Marcia Hart, NAVAIR director of communications told The War Zone at the time.
That standdown remains in effect, with no date specified about when it might be lifted.
In addition to the problems with the ice protection system, DOT&E found that the maintenance hours per flight hour (MH/FH) “did not meet the requirement, with 45 percent of the total MH/FH attributed to special inspections and scheduled maintenance requirements.”

If [an] E-2D is not available,  what airplane can be used as a communications [node]?” Whitesell offered as one additional role that's being looked into now. The E-2D now serves as an airborne early warning and control platform but also provides critical advanced networking and data fusion for a carrier strike group and any of its aircraft. 

 

the Navy is planning to phase out the aging Greyhounds, a twin-engine, propeller-driven airframe that first entered service in the mid-1960s, these changes won’t have any effect on the carrier groups' ability to carry out their missions

The C-2s are currently scheduled to sundown in August 2026, Navy CMDR Dawn M. Stankus, a spokesperson for Naval Air Force Atlantic told The War Zone. “Fleet Logistics Support (VRC) Squadron 40 located in Norfolk, Virginia is the last active C-2 Greyhound squadron in the U.S. Navy. There are a total of 15 C-2 Greyhounds still in service to support logistics and personnel transfers on the East and West Coasts.”

The Lockheed S-3 Viking is a four-crew, twin-engine turbofan-powered jet aircraft designed and produced by the American aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Corporation. Because of its characteristic sound, it was nicknamed the "War Hoover" after the vacuum cleaner brand.

The S-3 was developed in response to the VSX program conducted by the U.S. Navy (USN) to procure a successor anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft to the Grumman S-2 Tracker. It was designed, with assistance from Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), to be a carrier-based, subsonic, all-weather, long-range, multi-mission aircraft.

On 21 January 1972, the prototype YS-3A performed the type's maiden flight. Upon entering regular service during February 1974, it proved to be a reliable workhorse. In the ASW role, the S-3 carried automated weapons and in-flight refueling gear. Further variants, such as the ES-3A Shadow carrier-based electronic intelligence (ELINT) platform, and the US-3A carrier-based utility and cargo transport, arrived during the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s, the S-3B's mission focus shifted to surface warfare and aerial refueling a carrier battle group. It saw combat during the Gulf War of the early 1990s, the Yugoslav Wars of the mid-to-late 1990s, and the War in Afghanistanduring the 2000s.

The S-3 was removed from front-line fleet service aboard aircraft carriers in January 2009, its missions having been taken over by the P-3C Orion, P-8 Poseidon, SH-60 Seahawk, and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. For more than a decade after that, some S-3s were flown by Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Thirty (VX-30) at Naval Base Ventura County / NAS Point Mugu, California, for range clearance and surveillance operations at the NAVAIR Point Mugu Range. These final examples in U.S. Navy service were retired in early 2016. The last operational S-3 was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at its Glenn Research Center until NASA retired it in mid-2021.

In the mid-1960s, the United States Navy (USN) formulated the VSX(Heavier-than-air, Anti-submarine, Experimental) requirement, which sought a dedicated anti-submarine aircraft capable of flying off of its aircraft carriers as a replacement for its existing inventory of piston-engined Grumman S-2 Trackers. The service issued a request for proposals to industry. During August 1968, a team led by Lockheed, as well as a rival team comprising Convair and Grumman, were requested to further develop their proposals to meet this requirement.

At this stage, Lockheed recognised that it had little experience in designing carrier based aircraft, thus the company reached out to the industrial conglomerate Ling-Temco-Vought(LTV), which joined the team. LTV assumed responsibility for the design of various elements of the airframe, such as the folding wings and tail, the engine nacelles, and the landing gear, some of which had been derived from the earlier LTV A-7 Corsair II and Vought F-8 Crusader. Sperry Univac Federal Systems was assigned the task of developing the aircraft's onboard computers which integrated input from sensors and sonobuoys.


Our naval personnel, who risk their lives to ensure our nation's security deserve premium safety while fulfilling their duties. Help give them the protection they merit. Sign this petition and help the US Navy to revisit the future of the Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft program, prioritizing safety over all else.