Could this device help catch Osprey clutch problems before disaster?

The Navy has awarded defense and aviation technology company Shift5 a contract to test predictive maintenance technology on the V-22 Osprey, which the company hopes might prevent gearbox catastrophes that have proven fatal in recent years.

Under Shift5′s contract with Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, the Marine Corps will run the company’s manifold technology on Osprey’s flown by its operational test squadron. This will allow the V-22 Joint Program Office to test how well continuous operational data monitoring works on the tilt-rotor aircraft, and how to develop rules for detecting maintenance problems that need to be quickly addressed, the company said in a release Wednesday.

“Given the criticality of solving some of these life-threatening issues that are happening on the V-22, it really is all about providing real-time insights to the crew for situational awareness so they can make better decisions,” said Shift5 chief executive and co-founder Josh Lospinoso.

Perhaps most critically, Lospinoso said, the predictive maintenance technology could help the military understand how problems called “hard clutch engagements” happen. Hard clutch engagements occur when an Osprey’s clutch connecting the engine to a propeller’s rotor gearbox briefly slips and then reengages. This can cause the aircraft to lurch and damage crucial components, which, in some instances, has been a factor in fatal Osprey crashes.

Five Marines died in a June 2022 Osprey crash in Southern California, which was later attributed to a hard clutch engagement. Multiple other Ospreys have experienced hard clutch engagements that alarmed Air Force leaders and have, at times, caused aircrews to cut flights short.

An Air Force CV-22B Osprey also crashed off the coast of Japan in November 2023, killing eight airmen and prompting a military-wide grounding of the tilt-rotor aircraft that lasted for months. The Air Force concluded that a critical gear in that Osprey’s proprotor gearbox failed and caused the crash.

Shift5′s manifold device will help build a dataset of clutch engagements, analyzing whether such engagements are becoming more aggressive and contributing factors, Lospinosa said.

“That really is the Holy Grail that NAVAIR has been after,” he said in an interview with Defense News.

Shift5′s device, a four-pound box that will be plugged into the Osprey’s data network, will upgrade how the aircraft collects data and make it more readily available to aircrews via a tablet-like display, Lospinoso said. Until now, he said, the most important data on hard clutch engagements have typically been only able to be accessed after the aircraft lands and investigators dive deep into the aircraft’s inner workings.

“It’s, in some cases, literally just taking data that already exists on a data bus and presenting it to the user,” Lospinoso said.

That data can include precise readings on the intensity and frequency of vibrations within the gearbox, for example, Lospinoso said.

The device could also give Osprey pilots reminders about the many actions they need to take and environmental factors they need to monitor, he said, which could reduce the chances of human error.

“Being an Osprey pilot is probably the most challenging job flying any aircraft of any kind,” Lospinoso said. “If they forget to take [certain steps], it can be extremely dangerous, but there’s nothing in the cockpit alerting them to [the fact that] these conditions exist. [The Shift5 device’s alerts are] almost like the equivalent of a seat belt reminder.”

According to Lospinoso, Shift5′s device will just be tested by the Joint Program Office for now. Eventually, the company hopes to have them installed in all of the military’s Ospreys, which he said would require a phased approach of taking some Ospreys down to install the devices during maintenance. He hopes the military and Shift5 might be able to start working towards full fielding of the device in the next quarter.