Darwin’s Diggers will be allowed to climb aboard the US V-22 Osprey aircraft, despite the controversial tiltrotor being placed on a worldwide flight restriction.

The news comes as Darwin’s 1st Brigade ramp up training activities alongside their US Marine counterparts across the Top End.

The Department of Defence told the NT News there were no restrictions on the carriage of Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in US aircraft.

Marine Rotation Force – Darwin (MRF-D) also confirmed there were no restrictions stopping their Australian counterparts from boarding their airframes.

“They clearly don’t have answers still on the cause of the mishaps and why the hard clutch engagement is happening, and they don’t have a fix for it”

An MV-22 Osprey touched down on an Australian warship last week, another indicator the tiltrotor is returning to routine service with the Marine Corps after a series of deadly crashes.

The U.S. military grounded its fleet of about 400 Ospreys between Dec. 6 and March 8 as it investigated the Nov. 29 crash of an Air Force CV-22 Osprey that killed eight airmen off Japan’s southern coast. An Osprey assigned to last year’s Marine rotational force crashed in August north of Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory, killing three Marines and injuring 20 others, three seriously. The Osprey has been plagued by a problem called hard clutch engagement that caused loss of control in some instances and was blamed for the deaths of five Marines in a June 2022 Osprey crash in California.

After the November crash, the Marines put their Ospreys in the air again less than a week after Naval Air Systems Command cleared them for flight on March 8.

Navy Ospreys are not yet flying passengers to aircraft flight decks

US officials are accusing the Pentagon of “recalcitrance” following attempts to obtain documents concerning the controversial aircraft. Meanwhile in the Top End, the tilt-rotors continue to fly.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) have remained cagey on the issue and have failed to confirm whether ADF troops would be permitted to board the aircraft.

The accusation comes after the subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs announced it would explore the controversial aircraft’s extensive history of deadly crashes in a hearing this week.

Subcommittee Chairman Glenn Grothman blasted the “unacceptable” number of US service members killed on board the tilt-rotor and accused the Pentagon of not complying with the requests of elected officials.

It is expected the most recent Osprey crashes will be examined in detail, including the deadly crash at the Tiwi Islands in August 2023, in which three Marines were killed. On August 27, 2023, Captain Eleanor LeBeau, Major Tobin Lewis and Corporal Spencer Collart were killed after their MV-22 Osprey went down on the first day of Exercise Predators Run.

An emergency response at the Darwin Airport has been declared a false alarm after a pair of fire trucks raced across the tarmac to seemingly save a landed United States V-22 Osprey.

On Tuesday, morning, passengers and staff were left confused when the airport came to a stand still as two fire trucks entered the airstrip to pull up alongside the US Marine aircraft.

Civilian onlookers watched with anticipation, only for the fire and rescue teams to stand down and return to their bays, with airport operations resumed a short time later.

There was no emergency and no problem with the aircraft.

The lawsuit, filed by the families of Sax, Carlson, Strickland and Rasmuson, accuses Boeing, Bell Textron, Rolls Royce Corps and Rolls Royce North America of negligence, negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation, and the failure to warn.

Tim Loranger, the lawyer representing the families in the lawsuit, told CNN on Thursday that ultimately the lawsuit alleges that the aircraft the Marines were on was known to have a defect but “insufficient steps have been taken to correct it.”

The lawsuit comes months after another deadly V-22 Osprey crash off the coast of Japan, which resulted in the deaths of eight US Special Operations airmen. The US military grounded its entire fleet of V-22 Ospreys in December as a result. That grounding guidance was lifted in March this year; officials said at the time an investigation identified a “materiel failure” responsible for the crash.

Col. Brian Taylor, the program manager of the Naval Air Systems Command V-22 joint program office, told reporters in March that the crash resulted from an “unprecedented” component failure, though he declined to say what component specifically failed or how.