Anthony Krockel is a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel whose most recent assignment was as the commodore of Training Air Wing FIVE responsible for undergraduate flight training for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. He also served as the commanding officer of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365, a reinforced V-22 Osprey squadron, during a deployment supporting combat operations. He is currently a pilot with a major airline.

Occasionally, a familiar pattern re-emerges in defense media: a handful of journalists hold on to the V-22 Osprey as the reliable clickbait keyword for aviation risk, even when the data tells a very different story. With a new Associated Press “investigation,” the pattern is repeating itself.

Outdated V-22 talking points continue to be espoused by lazy journalists who would rather provide dated headlines than report on more recent and accurate V-22 safety conclusions provided by senior Marine Corps leaders, the Congressional Record Service (CRS), and years of facts that clearly show that the V-22 is not a safety outlier. Yet the Osprey remains one of the most scrutinized aircraft in Pentagon history, in part because of its revolutionary design, and a series of tragic mishaps that occurred decades ago when the aircraft was in development.

Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, underscored earlier this year that the V-22 is “the most tested aircraft we have,” with a safety profile that outperforms other aviation platforms.

In September, CRS released a report describing V-22 mishap rates. In that report, “the Class A mishap rate for the Marine Corps’ MV-22 is 2.56 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours for the period FY2015 to FY2024. The Marine Corps average for all aircraft over that time frame is 2.67 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours.”

The last Class A mishap involving an Osprey occurred two years ago. An investigation found both flawed aircrew decision-making and a failure of material in the proprotor gearbox to be the main contributing factors. The military has since incorporated additional training to Osprey crews on the conclusions of the report and has been addressing the material issue with a new alloy manufacturing process.

Despite these facts, it is still the easiest and laziest trick in a reporter’s notebook: to color the Osprey as if it were the Pentagon’s most troubled aircraft. Journalists pushing this narrative even contradict themselves within their own article by sharing data about the aircraft that have actually contributed to “the spike in aircraft accidents in 2024,” such as the H-60 Black Hawk, F/A-18 Super Hornet, and AH-64 Apache. The V-22 mishap rate ranks far behind all three (with zero mishaps since November 2023) but still gets singled out by authors as “risky” and “most dangerous.”

For more than a decade, the MV-22’s Class A mishap rate has been lower than many Marine Corps platforms and compares favorably to several aircraft across other service branches, yet critics remain active — and uninformed.

The Osprey program is one of the most transparent in the Pentagon. Every review, from internal safety boards to independent analysis, has reinforced the same conclusion: The aircraft is safe when operated within established parameters, and defense services have implemented meaningful improvements to address readiness and reliability.

While all military mishaps are serious and warrant investigation, there is no factual support for those who argue the V-22 has a unique aviation safety problem. The data simply does not support that. The aircraft is not an outlier; nor is it the cause or even a contributor to recent mishap spikes.

The American people deserve better. So do the service members who fly and maintain the V-22 every day, confident not because of wishful thinking, but because the numbers back them up.

Meanwhile, military aviation faces broader challenges. Over the past four years, mishap rates have increased across multiple military services. A serious examination of aircrew training, flight discipline, and systematic under-resourcing in readiness and sustainment across the armed services is required. Likewise, aircraft maintainability and reliability should be scrutinized closely for future aircraft acquisitions.

The real question — which, again, news coverage glosses over — is why? Why are military aviation accident rates up?

While some accidents can be due to one-off causes, Congress should examine to what extent accident rates are the result of under-funding military operations and maintenance (O&M) budgets.

A lack of adequate funding results in insufficient depth and breadth of replacement parts on the shelf. If maintainers don’t have parts, they slowly lose the skill of troubleshooting and maintenance repair. This can lead to “cannibalization” — an inefficient form of maintenance that involves moving parts from one aircraft to another.

These maintenance trends put undue stress on maintainers, which results in reduced numbers of aircraft available for training flights. This in turn significantly decreases flight hours for aircrews. Crews with less currency and proficiency can sometimes make compromises that increase safety risks, and they can lack the kind of judgment and sound decision-making that only additional flight time can provide.

Congress likes to point the finger at the Pentagon, but Congress needs to look itself in the mirror and consider whether it has provided adequate resources over the last four years to address these rising accident rates.

In their eagerness to bash the Osprey, journalists are missing the real story, which is the broader systemic issues that prevent our service members from accomplishing their missions and returning home safely.

previous coverage

• Marine Ospreys flights resume after safety pause; other tiltrotors remain grounded