V-22 Osprey Mission Designations

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Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 1

Greetings all! Can anyone out there explain what's up with the V-22 Osprey's military designation? The Marine Corps' version is always referred to in the press as the MV-22 and the Air Force's version as the CV-22. Going by the current U.S. designation system, if the USAF plans to use the Osprey in the Special Ops mission, then shouldn't it carry the 'M' prefix to denote it's role (i.e., the MH-53J Pave Low III, MH-60G Pavehawk, etc.)? Seems to me that the designations should be reversed, as I've never heard of a Marine helo specified for the Special Ops mission. Any ideas on this??

Best Regards.

Ray Robb :-)

Original post

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 151

RE: V-22 Osprey Mission Designations

Since the Marines were the first to operate the V-22 they designated it MV-22 (M for Marine) and that left the Air Force to settle with another designation. I agree the Air Force V-22s should get the M designation for their Spec ops role. But I guess they could adopt the Navy's Spec ops Designator H (ex. HH-60H). The H would be good because the Navy is going to use the S designator for its version of the V-22 and they airfoce used to use the H on their HH-3 Jolly Greens and on their
HH-60A Nighthawks.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 258

RE: V-22 Osprey Mission Designations

Who cares about the nameif we have the Stealth helecopter on the way! i can hardly wait to see that in action! Later.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 151

RE: V-22 Osprey Mission Designations

the c designation could stand for covert for their covert missions of infiltration and extraction of special forces units.