A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey takes off from the flight deck of Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer in the Pacific Ocean, Dec. 5, 2025. (Joseph Helms/U.S. Marine Corps)
The military services that fly V-22 Osprey variants must work more closely to share safety and maintenance concerns and best practices after an uptick in recent years of deadly crashes involving the tilt-rotor aircraft, a government watchdog report found.
The Government Accountability Office found rates of the most serious, non-combat incidents involving Osprey aircraft in fiscal 2023 and 2024 were between 36% and 88% higher than each of the prior eight fiscal years, in a Dec. 8 report. Four fatal Osprey crashes since 2022 have killed 20 U.S. service members and led to a three-month grounding of the Pentagon’s entire fleet of V-22s at the end of 2023.
GAO analysts found the most “serious accidents related to materiel failure of airframe or engine components and human error during aircraft operations or maintenance.” But they warned that the three military branches that fly Ospreys — and the Pentagon’s joint office which oversees the program — “have not routinely shared information” with each other including “hazard and accident reports,” emergency procedures and general knowledge about the aircraft, and maintenance data for components and parts shared by the three versions of the aircraft.
V-22 Ospreys are tiltrotor aircraft that combine the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the speed and long range of a turboprop airplane, according to its manufacturer, Boeing. The Pentagon’s Osprey inventory includes the MV-22 flown by the Marines, the CV-22 flown by the Air Force and the CMV-22B flown by the Navy.
The Marines own the vast majority of the Defense Department’s Osprey fleet with some 348 aircraft, as of June 2025. The Air Force owns 52 Ospreys, and the Navy has 29. The Marine Corps has flown the aircraft since 2007, the Air Force has had them since 2009 and the Navy first began flying Ospreys in 2021.
Though the Osprey program has faced past concerns about safety, the uptick of fatal incidents in the last two years — including the 2023 crash of an Air Force CV-22 Osprey near Japan that killed eight airmen — led the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness subpanel to request the new GAO probe.
The GAO probe did not explore the reasons behind the Osprey crashes, but it found that the Osprey’s troubles could be partially attributed to its status as the military’s first generation of tiltrotor aircraft, its “complex engineering,” and its “complex and expensive components” that are maintenance intensive.
GAO also found that the services that fly Ospreys have no formal method of sharing timely safety information and no clear oversight structure to ensure such materials are shared broadly across the Osprey community.
“Without refining the joint program’s process for identifying, analyzing and responding to Osprey safety risks to incorporate and prioritize system and non-system safety risks, program stakeholders cannot adequately mitigate risks that can contribute to death, injury, or loss of mission capability and resources,” GAO analysts wrote.
They suggested the Pentagon oversee a process to ensure Osprey-flying military services refine their processes for “identifying, analyzing and responding to all Osprey safety risks”; develop a new oversight structure to ensure safety issues are addressed; and establish “safety sharing agreements.” GAO also suggested the Pentagon “conduct a comprehensive review of maintenance guidance and inspection procedures and update them as needed to ensure that Osprey units are using the system for tracking serialized aircraft components.”
Pentagon officials agreed with their recommendations, according to the report.
