Osprey downwash is damaging flight decks

[unhappycamper]

An MV-22 Osprey from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 lands aboard the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima in July 2008. The aircraft's exhaust is so hot that it is melting flight decks.


Osprey downwash is damaging flight decks
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Nov 27, 2009 16:48:36 EST

Leaving an MV-22 Osprey’s rotors idling on a flight deck will create enough heat to melt and buckle the deck in about 10 minutes.

Repeated deck buckling will ruin the flight deck in about 40 percent of the ship’s projected life span.

And introducing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jump-jet variant will only add to the problem.

Those are among the issues cited by the Office of Naval Research as it seeks a modification for flight decks to better withstand and distribute the heat from the new aircraft’s exhaust and downwash.

ONR is seeking proposals on how to build a “flight deck thermal management” system that will help distribute the heat from the aircraft and keep the deck temperatures below 300 degrees.


Rest of article at: http://marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/11/marine_osprey_112709w/



unhappycamper comment: The Osprey has been 24 years in the making. One would thing that the shitheads who built this POS would have thought "I wonder what the turbine exhaust will do to ships?" Color me surprised. Not.

[JohnyCanuck]

1. That's not the way to look at it.

Just think of it as another profit opportunity for defense contractors to make a few bucks upgrading or retrofitting the decking on all the navy ships to handle the high heat. Yay for the free market!

[baldguy]

3. +1

[Altoid_Cyclist]

2. As I've noted before, I'm glad that my Nephew decided not to get involved with the Osprey.

As you pointed out, all those years of development and all of the deaths involved and they still are finding out things that should have been studied years ago.

[Orrex]

4. Yeah, but these things totally kicked ass in that Transformers documentary.