Marine Corps takes delivery of final MV-22B Osprey

The Marine Corps has taken delivery of the last of 359 MV-22B Ospreys that it has procured over the past two decades, Corps officials announced on Tuesday.

The tiltrotor MV-22B Osprey is the primary aircraft that takes Marines to and from Navy ships, remote bases and battlefields. The Osprey’s unique rotating engines allow it to fly long-range missions like an airplane while also being able to hover and make vertical takeoffs and landings, similar to a helicopter. The Marines started to use the aircraft as part of operations in 2007, and the MV-22B went on to replace the Corps’ CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters.

The military’s Ospreys typically cost between $75 million and $90 million per aircraft. The Air Force flies about 50 Ospreys in its special operations fleet, and the Navy has a handful on full-time ship-to-shore ferry duty. But in the Marines, the MV-22B is the “backbone” of the aviation component within the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force, or MAGTAF, the primary formation in which Marines fight.

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Over the past 20 years, the MV-22B Osprey transformed Marine aviation, Lt. Gen. William Swan, deputy commandant for aviation, said at a ceremony on Tuesday marking the delivery of the final aircraft.

“Before the Osprey, distance imposed a very different decision calculus for our Marine commanders,” Swan said during a speech in Amarillo, Texas. “The V-22 connected ships, expeditionary bases, forward positions, and distributed forces in ways previous generations could only imagine.”

By doing so, the MV-22B Osprey has given…