The Insane Engineering of the V-22 Osprey

It is close to midnight when  the emergency is called in. Dark and rainy night on an aircraft carrier.

An MV-22 sits on the deck of the carrier  folded up. Alarm bells and sirens erupt. An F-15 has just crashed in the Libyan desert,  and its pilot is running for his life. Every passing second gets him further from being a  survivor to being a geopolitical bargaining chip.

The Arab Spring arrived in Libya in  February 2011. What started as small sprouts of localized protests soon  erupted into a violent civil war.

The population was finally rising against the  42 year rule of Gaddafi, but the dictator's counter-offensive was brutal. With radio  warnings echoing across the Libyan desert “We are coming tonight... we will find you in  your closets. We will show no mercy and no pity.”

Gaddafi unleashed the country's advanced fighter  jets on its own people. And NATO drew a red line there. Moving to impose a no fly zone over the  country with the combined airforce of NATO.

Amidst the chaos, this American pilot crash landed  behind enemy lines after a mechanical failure. His life now depends on this. The V-22 Osprey.

For thirty years, this machine has been  plagued by accidents and criticized as a technological Frankenstein. Too  complex to fly. A controversial hybrid of a plane and helicopter, but  tonight only it could be the hero.

Slowly unfurling its massive composite blades, the wings rotate ninety degrees and lock into  place. Twin halos appear overhead, as its blades thrash the air into submission. The V-22 now  has to make its most difficult transformation.

This aircraft has to operate in two  modes. Vertical and horizontal flight. Two completely different flight modes, using  the very same controls. This is the Thrust Control Lever. It controls both the collective  pitch in vertical flight, allowing the V-22 to

control altitude in hover, but in forward  flight it controls speed by controlling the engines thrust, and altitude is controlled by  the elevator, which is controlled by the stick.

A fly by wire system was the only option to  allow the control logic to flip like this, and things get even more  complicated in the transition.

With the turn of this wheel the pilot  effortlessly controls the nacelles. Tipping them forward, trading vertical  rotor wash for forward thrust. As this transition happens the V-22 is neither  helicopter or plane, and the computer has to gradually blend both control logics  together until the transition is complete.