Republican leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability are threatening to subpoena top Pentagon officials if they fail to provide documents related to crashes of the military aircraft known as the Osprey.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R- Ky., and National Security Subcommittee Chair Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wisc., wrote that they requested documents about the troubled Osprey program Dec. 21, 2023, but have faced “significant delays and hurdles” in obtaining the information.
Specifically, committee leaders are asking the Pentagon to produce safety investigations for every major crash of the tiltrotor aircraft since 1991.
Instead, according to their letter, the Pentagon has only provided “highly redacted documents” that are already publicly available. If the Pentagon doesn’t provide the information by July 30, they warn in their letter that they will consider “use of the compulsory process,” meaning subpoenas.
In a statement, a Defense Department spokesperson said, "The Department has worked diligently to accommodate the House Oversight Committee’s requests, including by providing more than 3,500 pages of documents. In addition, representatives from the V-22 Joint Program Office and the Military Departments provided a briefing to Committee staff in March, and the Department made multiple officials, including the Commander of Naval Air Systems Command, available to testify at the Committee’s hearing last month on the safety of the V-22 Osprey. The Department will continue to work with the Committee to accommodate their requests.”
Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The committee launched a review after 20 service members died in four Osprey crashes in less than two years. Congressional investigators have been examining the crashes for more than six months, but U.S. military officials have refused to release the safety reports, arguing that the promise of confidentiality for witnesses at safety boards yields more information.
The U.S. military has flown the V-22 Osprey, which can rise vertically like a helicopter and fly horizontally like a plane, since 1989. From 1989 to 2017, seven accidents killed 41 service members and other passengers.
From 2018 to 2021, there were no fatal crashes. In recent years, however, there has been a rise in Osprey Class A mishaps.
Class A mishaps, meaning incidents that result in death, a permanent disability to a service member or at least $2.5 million in damage to the aircraft, are the most serious category of military accidents.
In 2020 and 2021, there were two Class A mishaps, but no fatalities. In 2022 and 2023, however, there were 11 Class A mishaps, four of them fatal, according to military data reviewed by NBC News.
NAVAIR ordered the entire Osprey fleet grounded more than three months ago, following the fatal Nov. 29, 2023, crash of an Air Force CV-22 Osprey off the coast of Japan that killed eight Special Operations airmen.
The grounding was lifted earlier this year.
Now, the committee is asking for every safety investigation report for all Class A Osprey mishaps since 1991.
