Hawaii is getting its first MV-22B Osprey squadron this summer, followed by a second tiltrotor Osprey squadron next year, said Brig. Gen. Russell Sanborn, commander of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.
Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268, which stands up in August, will have 12 Ospreys, which are the "perfect fit" for the Pacific theater because they ferry troops and supplies more than 6,000 miles within 24 hours, Sanborn told Marine Corps Times.
"The Pacific is becoming more and more important," he Sanborm said. "The Pacific is also huge. The last thing you want to is concentrate your forces all in one location, because then you become vulnerable, you become static. What the Marine Corps is doing – is distributing [forces] out."
In addition to having staging bases in Hawaii, Okinawa, Guam and mainland Japan, there are literally thousands of islands in the Pacific where Ospreys can operate, Sanborn he said. The Osprey can also land on U.S. and allied ships.
"We are spreading throughout the Pacific, forward-deployed, expeditionary, with the capability to go anywhere we want, when we want to go there," Sanborn said. "That's what the Osprey is going to going to bring to us."
Marine Aircraft Group 24 in Hawaii currently has UH-1Y Hueys and CH-53E Super Stallions, so the Ospreys will be for medium lift missions, he said.
"A 53 is a very large aircraft … but you don't always need that kind of capability and sometimes that airplane is too big for certain landing zones," Sanborn said. "Then you can go all the way down to the low end, the light vertical lift, which is the Huey, which can't carry as many troops, supplies or people; therefore, you need to make more runs."
After two major earthquakes shook Japan in April, the Japanese government specifically requested that Marine Ospreys take part in humanitarian relief missions, he said. They arrived from the Philippines within 24 hours.
"It carried the right amount of equipment; it could go into very confined LZs [landing zones]; and because of its speed and its capacity, it could very quickly shuttle back and forth: Get supplies, drop them off, and so forth," Sanborn said. "That was the perfect mission for that aircraft."
In addition to being able to land in places inaccessible to other aircraft, the Osprey functions in its airplane mode for most of its flight, he said. Ospreys fly at 240 knots and they are able to refuel midair, so they can fly much farther further than and faster than most helicopters, which typically have a maximum range of 200 miles.
The first Ospreys are coming from San Diego to participate in Rim of the Pacific Exercise, to be held June 30 - Aug. 4, and they will stay in Hawaii afterward, Sanborn said.
"The reason why we're doing that is it saves taxpayer dollars," he said. "We put them aboard the ship; they sail over here; they do the exercise. When the exercise is over, they fly those helicopters to Marine Corps Base Hawaii. We didn't have to pay for bringing them over just all by themselves."
U.S. allies in the Pacific have expressed an interest in training with Marines in Ospreys, Sanborn said. One possible place Ospreys could visit is Australia, he said.
"We'll go anywhere in the Pacific and Australia is just yet another base that we can operate out of with our good friends and partners the Australians," Sanborn said. "I'm pretty sure we'll be there."
