Widow: Ground This Military Plane Before More People Die | Opinion

Since the wee hours of Nov. 30, I have relived the same awful moment every day—my doorbell ringing at three o’clock in the morning, opening the door to see two Air Force officers in their Service Dress blues and hearing them ask, “Are you the spouse of Jacob Galliher?” My 2-year-old, Malcolm, was rubbing his eyes as he walked into the living room and saw the military uniforms, exclaiming, “Daddy’s home!”
Jacob should have been home. Like Malcolm, I had been eagerly expecting him. Since 2022, we’d been living in western Tokyo on Yokota Air Base, thousands of miles away from our family and friends. His absence, however brief, was always felt.
The morning of the day before, as Jacob was getting ready to leave on a short intelligence mission, I asked if he could stay home with me, Malcolm, and Killian, our second son who was only 7-weeks old. Though technically on parental leave, Jacob replied, “They really need me… I’m going in.”
A direct support operator assigned to the 43rd Intelligence Squadron, Jacob was a decorated Mandarin linguist. On these missions, his role was to support the crew by translating anything he picked up, in case there was a threat warning or other awareness situations.
Later that day, I saw via a location-sharing app that Jacob’s phone had last pinged off Yakushima Island. Never heard of it, I thought. I did a Google search to learn a little about the island. What came up was the news that a CV-22 Osprey had crashed near it that afternoon. Jacob had been flying aboard one of the tiltrotor craft. I fell to the floor, unable to breathe.
The Air Force officers told me that seven other crew members had been on the aircraft with Jacob, and that they were still looking for his body. Two days later, my doorbell rang again, this time in the afternoon, when officers delivered the news that my 24-year-old husband’s body had been recovered.
Jacob didn’t have to die and it’s not hard to figure out where to place the blame.
The U.S. military has approximately 400 Ospreys in operation. This tiltrotor aircraft is unique in that it has the capacity to ascend and land vertically, like a helicopter, and fly with the speed of a propeller plane. According to Bell-Boeing, its manufacturer, “Osprey’s multi-mission advantage across a full range of military operations means fewer resources are required to complete more tasks, improving mission efficiency and reducing logistic costs.”
There is also a human cost, though—and it’s devastating. Ospreys, I now know, have a long history of crashes and fatalities. Including the crash that killed my husband, in the last two decades, there have been 10 crashes resulting in 57 deaths. In the last two-and-a-half years alone, 20 American military members have died on an Osprey while serving their country.
Our family is now part of a club that no one wants to belong to—spouses and family members whose loved ones died in a fatal Osprey crash. Soon after Jacob died, I began receiving messages via social media from others who endure (present tense, this agony does not end) this unique and heartbreaking loss. There is widespread anger and pain that crashes like these keep happening. We all relate to the emptiness of having “our person” being taken from us so senselessly.
In the aftermath of the crash that killed my husband, the military grounded its 400 Ospreys for three months, the longest period the aircraft has been out of operation. But if intermittently grounding the aircraft solved the problem, my husband would still be alive. When we moved to Japan, Ospreys were grounded due to safety concerns. This step, while important, did not prevent the deaths of my husband and his seven fellow crew members.
Last month, my doorbell rang again, this time regarding the results of the Air Force Accident Investigation Board (AIB) report on the crash. It felt surreal to be standing in my new home, located in the community where my husband grew up, our walls lined with photos of Jacob smiling with his boys—reminders of our horrific loss—while Air Force officers told me that it is “safe” for the Ospreys to be in operation.
Having connected with so many families in a similar situation—knowing this pain intimately 10 times over—I find this determination of the Osprey being “safe” nothing short of disgusting. I’m already heartbroken for the next family.
The AIB report characterizes this accident as a “mishap,” attributing the crash to “a catastrophic failure of the left-hand prop roto gear box that created a rapidly cascading failure of the aircraft’s drive system…” The findings also state that “decision-making was casual,” effectively placing partial blame on the pilot. I’ve since heard accounts of pilots who would have made the exact same call as this pilot. All of them made it home alive.
After the officers left, I read the AIB report. My jaw dropped when I saw that one of the crew members is quoted as saying, “F&** this plane.”
Despite what the officers told me, I learned last week about the existence of an internal report by the Safety Investigation Board, recently reported on by Military.com. Though not released to the public, the SIB report “found that the high-speed gear that failed on Gundam 22 because of a single crack ‘was similar to those seen on seven previous failures in low-speed planetary pinion gears.'” Seven.
I struggle to understand how this finding is compatible with the determination that Ospreys are “safe.”
Considering the Osprey’s record, the reports, and what is known of the response to major and ongoing safety concerns, I don’t believe it’s a stretch to say that this will happen again if something doesn’t change—not “if” but “when.”
These accidents and fatalities are not “mishaps” but, in my view, preventable tragedies that affect real people in the most devastating of ways.
In March, when the military lifted their unprecedented grounding of Ospreys—even though the Air Force’s investigation not been completed—Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, gave voice to many of our worries when he said, “Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DoD assesses risks.”
Despite the voices of lawmakers and family members who are eager for answers, these dangerous aircraft continue to operate, putting the lives of our service members at risk. They remain an integral part of future operations planning. Marine Corps assistant deputy commandant for aviation General Richard Joyce, said that the Marine Corps plans to keep the Osprey in action through the 2050s. Joyce declared, “There is no taking our eye off of V-22 and the years of service life that it has in front of us.”
While the Osprey might have plenty of life ahead, my husband and all the other military members who died on Ospreys have no such privilege. That became clear to me the moment I saw my husband being carried off a plane in a box that had “body” and “head” written on the side.
My children will never experience their father’s goofy, ball of sunshine personality. I’ll never receive another text from him, like his last: I love you lots lots lots. Every special occasion will remind us of our aching loss. There are too many people like us, who live with this grief and await news of the next inevitable crash with dread.
Until the root cause is identified and corrected, I believe the CV-22 Ospreys should be grounded indefinitely. With mechanical failure a consistent common denominator, anything less is risking another family’s unending heartbreak.
Ivy Galliher, 25, is the widow of SSgt Jacob “Jake” M. Galliher and the mother of their two young boys, Malcolm and Killian. She runs the Jacob Galliher Foundation, which provides scholarships and awards to brave, kind, and deserving individuals, ensuring that Jake’s legacy of bravery, dedication and kindness lives on.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.