Scrutiny of the military's Osprey aircraft is ramping up as family members of an Air Force special operations airman who was killed in a crash last year have filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against the aircraft's manufacturers, and members of Congress are demanding that officials ground the troubled aircraft and change the culture of secrecy around its issues.
Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher, 24, was one of eight airmen killed during a training mission on Nov. 29, 2023, when their CV-22 Osprey, call sign Gundam 22, had a mechanical issue and crashed off the southern coast of Japan. His estate filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Friday -- the one-year anniversary of the crash.
The lawsuit named Boeing and Bell Textron, the manufacturers of the aircraft, as well as Universal Stainless and Alloy Products, a subcontractor that provided metal for the aircraft's gearbox, which an internal investigation has implicated in the crash. The lawsuit alleges those companies "had prior awareness of the high risk for crashes, including documented concerns with the alloy manufacturing for pinion gears in the aircraft's gearbox," Galliher's estate said in an emailed statement.
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"The family's paramount goal is to get the Osprey grounded until it is shown that the manufacturers and their suppliers have taken the appropriate remedial measures to ensure the Osprey is safe to fly, and to ensure that the manufacturers give the military the proper information so that pilots in the future will have a complete and accurate picture of the integrity of their craft," Alice Forbes, an attorney for the fallen airman's estate, said in an emailed statement Monday.
Galliher was a native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and joined the Air Force in August 2017, according to an Air Force Special Operations Command news release last year. He was a direct support operator assigned to the 43rd Intelligence Squadron out of Yokota Air Base, Japan.
He was also an honor graduate of Basic Military Training, a distinguished graduate of the Air Force's Cryptologic Language Analyst Course, and honor graduate of the Defense Language Institute's Chinese Language Course, according to the AFSOC release.
Military.com was the first to report on the cause of the 2023 accident and exclusively revealed internal safety board investigation findings that showed that the fracturing of a single high-speed planetary pinion gear, a major factor in the Nov. 29 crash, was comparable to seven other failures stretching back to 2013.
Forbes told Military.com in an emailed statement that, during the discovery process of the civil lawsuit, the "hope is to ascertain the true core causes of the crash, so remedial measures can be taken to prevent another senseless tragedy."
In addition to Galliher, the crash also claimed the lives of Maj. Jeffrey T. Hoernemann; Maj. Eric V. Spendlove; Maj. Luke A. Unrath; Capt. Terrell K. Brayman; Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy; Staff Sgt. Jake M. Turnage; and Senior Airman Brian K. Johnson.
Military.com recently reported that Universal Stainless -- the subcontractor responsible for building the gear that failed on Gundam 22 -- has a long history of problems stemming back to 2001, when a lawsuit alleged the company was making substandard steel for aircraft parts.
However, it appears that Congress has not been kept up-to-date on those issues. The rudimentary nature of some of the 19 questions three lawmakers from Galliher's home state pose in a Nov. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his staff reveals that lack of transparency.
One of the first questions is simply a request to know when the office handling the Osprey became "first aware of the mechanical problems at the root of the V-22 crashes?"
Representatives for Boeing and Bell Textron said in emailed statements to Military.com that they do not comment on ongoing or pending litigation. Universal Stainless has not returned multiple requests for comment from Military.com submitted through the company's website.
The Galliher family cited Military.com's reporting in a press statement last week announcing its plans to file the lawsuit.
In August, Galliher's widow, Ivy Groshong-Galliher, published an opinion piece in Newsweek titled "Ground This Military Plane Before More People Die" in which she expressed her heartbreak and worries about the V-22 Osprey.
"Jacob didn't have to die, and it's not hard to figure out where to place the blame," she wrote.
The Galliher estate's lawsuit follows similar legal action taken in May related to another Osprey crash.
The Galliher estate joins the families of four Marines killed in a 2022 V-22 Osprey training crash in 2022 in California who also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Bell Textron and Boeing, as well as Rolls-Royce, which designs and manufactures the engines.
In addition to the family lawsuits, lawmakers are also seeking accountability related to the Osprey.
Two senators and a U.S. congressman who represent Massachusetts, where Galliher was from, are demanding answers from the Pentagon and calling for the Osprey's grounding.
In the Nov. 25 letter, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Rep. Richard Neal, all Democrats, say that "the aircraft should be grounded, and should not be deployed again until the platform's significant deficiencies are fully addressed."
The letter, which heavily cites Military.com's previous reporting on the Gundam 22 crash and other issues with the Osprey program, argues that the Pentagon has not been honest with Congress about the full scope of the issues facing the aircraft.
Specifically, the three lawmakers go after the Air Force's practice of keeping its Safety Investigation Board, or SIB, reports -- the more detailed and honest but confidential of the two reports any mishap investigation produces -- from not only the public but Congress as well.
"We also urge DoD to reconsider its policies to keep the entirety of SIB investigations from the
public," the three Massachusetts lawmakers argued, noting that such investigations "include recommendations to address the future safety of weapons."
"Failing to share that information with Congress harms congressional oversight and our ability to help protect service members from future mishaps and accidents," the letter says.
The response from the Air Force and the military office that oversees the Osprey to Military.com has been a refusal to answer most of the questions that the findings raise. Neither the military nor Bell Textron has even been willing to say whether Universal Stainless is still making parts for the aircraft.
Furthermore, the Air Force moved to make accessing those reports more onerous, requiring some maintainers to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to receive information about crashes and mishaps.
Transparency advocates who spoke with Military.com in October said that the new policy is heavy-handed and hides important safety information from the public.
According to the lawmakers' letter, the air service has launched an investigation into how the SIB report was obtained by the press.
Warren, Markey and Neal say that "the past failures of this program, its continuous cause for concern, and the lives lost -- as well as the fact that members of the press have already obtained the report -- merit the public release of this report to restore service members' trust in this program."
They urged that any disciplinary action against those who released the report "take into account the compelling public interest benefits of the release of this information to protect the lives and safety of service members."
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