A senior defense official has confirmed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been briefed on the plans to return the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to flight after a nearly three-month grounding, but the exact timing of that return remained unclear Monday.
Despite the briefing, which is seen as a step closer to lifting the grounding following a deadly crash of an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey on Nov. 29 that killed eight airmen, none of the services was answering the question of when it expects to fly the aircraft again.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the flight ban would be lifted this week. However, officials for the Navy and Air Force chose not to answer questions Military.com posed to them about that timing. The Marine Corps simply said it had no updates.
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The move to return the aircraft to flight would raise many questions since the Osprey has had a spate of deadly crashes — in addition to the Air Force’s November crash off the coast of Japan, there was a deadly Marine Corps Osprey crash in Australia last summer for which the investigations have not been completed.
There is also an ongoing problem with the aircraft’s clutch systems that turned deadly in June 2022. The military has claimed the issue is under control, despite it not having a full understanding of the cause.
Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the…
