waste & abuse

Insight on the News, March 19, 2001 by Sean Paige

On a Wing, a Rotor and a Prayer

Nearly two dozen U.S. Marines may be dead, killed in crashes of the experimental new aircraft, the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, because the service cut corners on testing and ignored known problems in the aircraft's hydraulic system, according to a new report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) that is sure to ruffle feathers at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

The Marine Corps -- which plans to buy 360 Ospreys at an estimated cost of $57 million each -- is touting the aircraft, which hovers like a helicopter but flies like a plane, as a replacement for its aging fleet of helicopters. But, in its typically hard-charging fashion, the Corps may have rushed the Osprey program along while ignoring serious safety and reliability problems, according to GAO. These included a high risk of accidents and handling problems during rapid descents as well as hydraulics and computer problems. The first problem has been linked to the deaths of 19 Marines last April, when an Osprey crashed in Arizona; a frayed hydraulics line is believed to have caused another Osprey crash last December that claimed the lives of four Marines and grounded the fleet.

Testing shortcuts and waivers intended to speed the plane toward production means that it hasn't been tried fully in real-world, combatlike conditions, according to the GAO. Originally, 101 tests were scheduled concerning an aerodynamic problem called the vortex ring state, which is believed to have contributed to the Arizona tragedy. But only 33 tests on the vortex ring state actually were conducted during flight-testing, according to the GAO, with the others deferred to cut costs and keep the program on schedule. Testing also has been minimal as to how the Osprey performs in icy conditions, during thunderstorms and while flying in formation.

GAO's study also throws cold water on some of the aircraft's purported advantages over helicopters. Some suggest that the high-tech Osprey may be too high-maintenance for the rough-and-ready Marines, and the Pentagon's inspector general currently is investigating whether Marine officials may have falsified data and logs to paper over the plane's possible maintenance problems. The downwash from its twin blades creates severe visibility problems for those loading or unloading and can blow sand or snow into interior components, according to GAO. And though it long has been billed as capable of transporting 24 combat-ready Marines, in fact it may only be able to carry 15 to 18 passengers. That's still better than the UH-60 Blackhawk's carrying capacity of 11 soldiers, Osprey supporters like to point out.

But not if they don't arrive alive.

While the Forest Service Fiddles, Burned Forests May Go to Waste

The fate of small mill towns across the West hangs in the balance this spring. But the U.S. Forest Service under Mike Dombeck-- a Clinton-era holdover who's been running the agency like the capital area chapter of the Sierra Club -- is once again turning its back on them by throwing up obstacles to the timely salvage of millions of trees burned in last summer's wildfires. Rather than harvesting living trees and managing public forests responsibly,. Dombeck's Forest Service opted instead to let them burn, ignoring the practical know-how of forestry professionals in favor of the feel-good ethos of aging flower children. And now, rather than see burned trees become lumber, it evidently prefers they go to waste.

In South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest, for instance, Dombeck severely restricted the salvaging of wood burned by last summer's Jasper Fire, reportedly leaving as much as 52 million board feet of wood to rot that could have been cut, milled and put to good use. Forest Supervisor John Twiss had asked Washington for an emergency exemption from the usual harvest appeals process to allow the speedier salvaging of burned timber before moisture, bugs and fungi made it unusable. But Dombeck granted only a partial exemption, allowing companies to harvest trees only where they had been before the fire. "This does not allow for any timely harvest for any of the trees outside the [existing] sales units," said one analyst for the Black Hills Forest Resource Association.

Another salvage timber sale on a burned section of New Mexico's Gila National Forest has been temporarily blocked and could be reversed permanently, due to the objections of an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity. The center argues that the dead trees make good habitats for animals and so must be protected. "Burned forests are much more than a commodity," a spokesman for the group told a New Mexico newspaper. "Fires create important habitat for a wide array of wildlife, especially our imperiled songbirds."

But some folks in New Mexico's Catron County say any lengthy delay in salvage work imperils another endangered species in the region, the New Mexico timber worker, and their critical habitat, the New Mexico mill town. "The issue affects not only the land or the forest, but the community as well," said Jim Coates of the Catron County Citizens Group.