• The US and Japanese divers have discovered wreckage and remains of five crew members from a US Air Force Osprey aircraft that crashed off southwestern Japan.

• The CV-22 Osprey carrying eight American personnel crashed on November 29 off Yakushima island during a training mission.

• The CV-22 Osprey is a tiltrotor aircraft.

What is a tiltrotor aircraft?

• Tiltrotor aircraft can takeoff and land like a helicopter, but fly fast like an airplane. They represent a unique class of sub-sonic air transport for military and civil aviation.

• It can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster, like an airplane, during flight.

Osprey aircrafts

• The V-22 Osprey is a joint service multirole combat aircraft utilising tiltrotor technology to combine the vertical performance of a helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft. 

• The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is the world’s first successful military tiltrotor to take to the air and the largest active production line for tiltrotors.

• With its rotors in vertical position, it can take off, land and hover like a helicopter. Once airborne, it can convert to a turboprop airplane capable of high-speed, high-altitude flight. 

• This combination results in global reach capabilities that allow the V-22 to fill an operational niche unlike any other aircraft.

• As a joint service military provider, the US Marines, US Air Force, US Navy, and Japan Ground Self Defence Force operate their own variants of the V-22 model – MV, CV, CMV, and Japan MV, respectively

• The CV-22 is the Special Operation Forces variant of the US Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey. 

• This aircraft offers increased speed and range over other rotary-wing aircraft, enabling Air Force Special Operations Command aircrews to execute long-range special operations missions.

• The mission of the CV-22 is to conduct long-range infiltration, exfiltration and resupply missions for US special operations forces.

• Ospreys have had a number of crashes, including in Japan, where they are used at US and Japanese military bases, and the latest accident rekindled safety concerns.

• According to reports, Japan has suspended all flights of its own fleet of 14 Ospreys. Japanese officials say they have asked the US military to resume Osprey flights only after ensuring their safety. 

• The Pentagon said no such formal request has been made and that the US military is continuing to fly 24 MV-22s, the Marine version of Ospreys, deployed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

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