The US Navy is to procure the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey for the carrier on-board delivery (COD) mission, with the first procurement dollars said to be included in the upcoming FY 2016 budget request. The procurement decision includes four Ospreys that had been intended for the US Marine Corps in the FY 2018-2020 requests. These will be replaced in later years. The total number of Navy Ospreys to be procured has not been announced. The navy has long had a notional requirement for V-22s for the COD mission, but until now they had never been included in the Department of Defense Future Years Defense Plan. Competitors for the COD mission included rebuilt Grumman C-2 Greyhounds and modified Lockheed S-3 Vikings, the latter taken from storage, as the type has been out of service for some years.
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