The Navy is in the early stages of building its own variant of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft to perform its critical carrier on-board delivery, or COD, mission to move forces, supplies and weapons to forward-stationed ships at sea.
The service plans to procure 44 new CMV-22B Ospreys for the COD mission, replacing the Cold War-era C-2 Greyhound aircraft. The Greyhound is a twin-engine, high-wing cargo aircraft introduced in the 1960s. Since that time, 35 C-2s have been in the naval inventory, officials said.
Unlike the C-2 fixed wing aircraft, which requires a catapult to lift off of the deck of a carrier, the Osprey tiltrotor can both reach airplane speeds of 220 mph and also hover like a helicopter such that it can come in for vertical landings on the carrier deck.
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