Richard Whittle on the V-22 development history

Rick Whittle joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss his book on the V-22 Osprey program development history.  In this episode, we learn about the development of the V-22 tilt-rotor technology. It allows an aircraft to take off and land vertically — like a helicopter — and transform its rotors to face forward — allowing it to fly with the range and speed of a fixed-wing airplane.

Rick Whittle tells us why the sales process between the contractor and Government is a “courtship”; the difficulties of a 50/50 partnership between companies with clashing cultures; what is intellectually corrupt about the way defense systems are tested; how the V-22 was saved from the chopping block by personal relationships in industry, the military services, and Congress; the challenges of fixed-priced development contracts; his experiences with the first V-22 deployment to Iraq; and much more.

He also describes how the defense acquisition system impacted the long and sometimes tortured development of the V-22, and compares that to the very different experience of another defense program, the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Be sure to check out both of Rick Whittle’s books on The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey, and Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution.

At one point, I asked Rick about the relationship between engineer-turned-salesman Dick Spivey and Marines action officer Robert Magnus (later Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.), and I asked how that related to the military-industrial complex. He explained the often legitimate role that personal relationships play, and, in my words, it allows for a conversation where military requirements can interact with, and inform, the technology development happening at the contractors. Here’s part of Rick’s well-balanced answer:

Those kinds of relationships can be very important, not only between business development people and people like action officers in the Pentagon, of course, but the executives and senior leaders in the military, and especially between business development people and Congressional staff and members of Congress — that’s usually how things shake out — and also between the defense contractors and the people who will ultimately oversee their programs, such as in this case the Naval Air Systems Command.

 

So personal relationships are extremely important in defense contracting. Despite the dryness and the technicality of the subject, and the bramble of regulations that are sometimes hard to read, there’s really a lot of personality and politics involved in how our defense contracting system works. And I think that’s probably true in other countries as well — I don’t know their systems — but I think it’s also a reflection of the fact that we’re a democracy. Our members of Congress get involved in what the Defense Department decides to do.

I agree that it is a complicated issue. However, to me it seems that Congress’ role is less about good oversight. There was a great story in 1989 when SecDef Dick Cheney and PA&E director David Chu put the V-22 on the chopping block, and a coalition in the Marines, the two contractors Bell and Boeing, and their Congressional delegations, worked together to save the V-22 program. Recommended.

In his book, Rick reminds us that Congress did not always get involved in program line-item decisions. Certainly Congress has the prerogative to earmark programs, but it seems it wasn’t always that way. 

One of the interesting aspects of the program was the huge number of military requirements put on a new type of tilt-rotor technology. The 1981 XV-15 prototype was a small demonstrator that could fly around and “bow to the crowd.” But the requirements formulated shortly thereafter were a giant leap. Here’s Rick:

The Osprey was supposed to do ten mission for all four armed services. For the Marines, it was supposed to do amphibious assaults and other transport missions that the CH-46 flew and the CH-53D flew, for the Air Force it was supposed to do special operations and combat search and rescue, for the Army — which didn’t end up buying any V-22s — they wanted the V-22 to do troop transport and medical evacuation and this wild spying mission, whose requirements said the aircraft had to cruise at 30,000 feet — that’s well above where you need oxygen — but evade surface to air missiles by diving toward the Earth at a decent rate of 20,000 feet per minute or  more — that’s about 230 miles per hour — and do a split “S” maneuver, then dispense chaff and flairs as it was coming down at tree top level. And this is an aircraft that’s supposed to have rotors that will move…

 

Also, it was supposed to carry guns and missiles, and have external hard points for fuel tanks and electronic countermeasures, and pressurized against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons contamination. It was supposed to fly 2,100 nautical miles on one tank of gas…

… and Rick’s description of the requirements go on for quite a while longer, including taking a hit from a 14.5 millimeter shell. Rick said that this list of requirements from a joint service committee was “one reason that I don’t think that joint programs work very well.” And their effect on the engineers who were to make the system work was huge:

These things were so distressing to the chief tilt-rotor engineer at Bell helicopter, a guy named Ken Wernicke, that when he saw the requirements he threatened to resign. He went to his boss — and he was a tilt-rotor true believer — and he said they’re going to destroy the tilt-rotor idea forever with this. And they nearly did.

There’s a great picture in the book where Ken Wernicke is standing with a model of the tilt-rotor he expected to build, and there’s a striking contrast with what the aircraft actually looked like. Check the book out for that.

Ultimately, the requirements had the V-22 more survivable than any previous helicopter. By the time the V-22 entered service in 2007, you had a general say that the concept of operations was that the V-22 would never fly into a combat zone. I asked Rick about this circle where military requirements created all sorts of design compromises, which then turned out not to be required in the first place.

Well I think it goes to the saying that the generals are always preparing for the last war.

Rick explained that the requirements writers and the critics were viewing the V-22 through the prism of Vietnam, where there would be many combat landings under heavy fire. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US had drones and other surveillance techniques to make sure that the V-22 did not have to land in a hot zone — even though it has a few times and proved survivable.

Here are some other good bits from the conversation:

Necessity is the mother of invention, and war is the mother of necessity.

And:

I think there’s a terribly wrong philosophical and political approach to testing, particularly of aircraft, within the defense establishment. If you go out and fail a test, that is a sign that your program is bad. And it shouldn’t be. You should go out and test to see what you need to change. But what happens is, when a program fails a test of some sort, critics seize on this. Critics in Congress have the GAO do a report on it, say. Or, they call in the media and point out what a disaster this program is because it failed a test. And its the wrong attitude. It’s really a naive, simplistic, attitude — and intellectually corrupt…

 

It puts pressure on the testers and it puts pressure on the contractors, because somebody has to decide what’s going to be on the test. A contractor is going to write a proposal or program with requirements they know they can pass, rather than something that advances the operational capability.

 

Testers — I don’t know a lot of people in operational test, I think they’re generally very by the book kinds of people — but the program managers within the defense acquisition establishment don’t want their program to fail a test. If they do, often times there are bad effects on the careers of the people running the program. And I think is this just exactly the opposite of the way we ought to look at testing of equipment.

There are so many more great parts in the podcast. Check out Rick Whittle’s books on the V-22 Osprey and the Predator. They are choke full of interesting facts and stories, which is a testament to his research method. I didn’t count every interview he performed, but based on a sample and extrapolation it was over 150 in the V-22 book, with people like Norman Augustine and John Lehman from all sides of the issue. In the podcast, Rick gives us some pointers on how he approaches research. I’d like to thank Rick Whittle again for joining me on Acquisition Talk.