WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday spoke at a Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request for the Army. In his questions to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, Murphy expressed concerns about the safety and cost of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, as well as the V-280 Valor, a new tiltrotor model which the Army is currently developing for its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program. He also underscored the need for adequate investment in modernizing the Black Hawk helicopter to maintain military preparedness, particularly following the Army’s decision to cancel the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program.

Murphy raised concerns about the safety of the tiltrotor aircraft, highlighting recent fatal crashes of the V-22 Osprey: “I think we’ve made a really bad bet on doubling down on tiltrotor technology that has proved to be deadly and wildly expensive. From March 2022 to November 2023, we had 20 service members die in four separate fatal Osprey crashes. This was after the Department of Defense said in February of 2023 that they had fixed the problem, the hard clutch engagement problem, that was thought to be behind earlier crashes. They were 99% certain that the problem had been fixed, and then there were four crashes where 20 more service members died.”

Murphy also pointed out the exorbitant, escalating costs associated with tiltrotor technology: “This is in addition to the program being wildly expensive. Costs per flying hour [for the Osprey] have spiked by 22% just between 2019 and 2020. And so, the decision to double down on the tiltrotor program with a tiltrotor selection as part of the future vertical lift program sounds disastrous and wildly costly for this Committee. Reports are that the tiltrotor bid was twice that of the competing bid, and then you have all of this evidence that you haven’t fixed the safety problems.”

Murphy pressed Secretary Wormuth on the Army’s cancellation of the FARA program and the need for meaningful Army investment in upgrading the Black Hawk helicopter: “A couple years ago, the Army's number one modernization priority was the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program. The Army reversed itself, canceled that program, which is going to put us in position to have to rely on the Black Hawk in the short term to do a lot more work, and yet this budget request includes only $25 million in Army research and development funding for Black Hawk modernization, which just doesn’t sound right given the fact that now that you aren’t building a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, you are gonna need to very quickly scale up and modernize the Black Hawks. So how do we make sure that we invest in the Black Hawk program in part as a means to balance out what we have lost with the cancellation of the FARA program?”

Last week, Murphy also raised concerns about the safety and cost of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

A full transcript of his remarks can be found below:

MURPHY: “Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you both for being here and for your service. It sounds like Senator Moran predicted my opening line of questioning here. Listen, I think we’ve made a really bad bet on doubling down on tiltrotor technology that has proved to be deadly and wildly expensive.

“From March 2022 to November 2023, we had 20 service members die in four separate fatal Osprey crashes. This was after the Department of Defense said in February of 2023 that they had fixed the problem, the hard clutch engagement problem, that was thought to be behind earlier crashes. They were 99% certain that the problem had been fixed, and then there were four crashes where 20 more service members died.

“This is in addition to the program being wildly expensive. Costs per flying hour have spiked by 22% just between 2019 and 2020. And so, the decision to double down on the tiltrotor program with a tiltrotor selection as part of the future vertical lift program sounds disastrous and wildly costly for this Committee. Reports are that the tiltrotor bid was twice that of the competing bid, and then you have all of this evidence that you haven’t fixed the safety problems.

“So, Secretary Wormuth, can you explain, (A): How the army can justify moving forward with a new tiltrotor aircraft when we can’t even figure out how to address the safety issues with the existing Osprey? And how we are going to account for a tiltrotor program that is known for its tendency for cost escalation? How can you guarantee that this isn’t gonna become just a giant cost suck on this committee as the costs escalate in the new tiltrotor program as they have in the Osprey program?”

WORMUTH: “Thank you, Senator. A couple of things on that. So, on safety, certainly we are concerned always anytime we see a helicopter crash or an airplane crash, whether it is the Osprey, or we have had some crashes of our Apaches. But one of the things I think that the FLRAA program will benefit from is over 20 years of safety experience with the Osprey and lessons from the Osprey. So, we will be factoring all of that and learning from all of that. And again, no helicopter is perfect. They are inherently – there can be challenges. But I think we will benefit greatly from the long track record and be able to learn lessons in terms of safety from Osprey.

“More broadly to your point about costs, again, we looked at not just costs when we considered the bids that came in, but also performance. And so, I think we have to weigh that, and as you know, ultimately, the GAO found that our decision to go with Bell Textron was sound. So, we will continue to look very closely at cost and we’ll monitor cost growth, but we also need to be looking at performance, and we felt that the Bell Textron proposal would give us the performance that we need.”

MURPHY: “A couple years ago, the Army's number one modernization priority was the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program. The Army reversed itself, canceled that program, which is going to put us in position to have to rely on the Black Hawk in the short term to do a lot more work, and yet this budget request includes only $25 million in Army research and development funding for Black Hawk modernization, which just doesn’t sound right given the fact that now that you aren’t building a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, you are gonna need to very quickly scale up and modernize the Black Hawks. So how do we make sure that we invest in the Black Hawk program in part as a means to balance out what we have lost with the cancellation of the FARA program?”

WORMUTH: “Thank you, Senator. One thing the Army is doing as part of our rebalance of the aviation portfolio is to pursue the reconnaissance requirements in a different way, really relying much more on the combination of space-based sensing, existing platforms, and things like future tactical unmanned aerial systems and what we were previously calling air launch defects but really we’re now just calling launched effects. So inherent in our decisions in the rebalancing is the fact that we believe we can meet that requirement in a different way.

“As you point out, we do need to continue to invest in Black Hawk, and I think there are things we could do. If Congress decided, for example, to give us more money for research and development in 2025 for Black Hawk, we could work on the fly-by-wire capabilities, we could work on doing more with the improved turbine engine, which is going to be critical not just for Black Hawk but also for Apache. So there are projects I think we could pursue, but I would leave it there.”

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