V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame [View All]

Source: TIME

It's hard to imagine an American weapons program so fraught with problems that Dick Cheney would try repeatedly to cancel it — hard, that is, until you get to know the Osprey. As Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush, Cheney tried four times to kill the Marine Corps's ungainly tilt-rotor aircraft. Four times he failed. Cheney found the arguments for the combat troop carrier unpersuasive and its problems irredeemable. "Given the risk we face from a military standpoint, given the areas where we think the priorities ought to be, the V-22 is not at the top of the list," he told a Senate committee in 1989. "It came out at the bottom of the list, and for that reason, I decided to terminate it." But the Osprey proved impossible to kill, thanks to lawmakers who rescued it from Cheney's ax time and again because of the home-district money that came with it — and to the irresistible notion that American engineers had found a way to improve on another great aviation breakthrough, the helicopter.

Now the aircraft that flies like an airplane but takes off and lands like a chopper is about to make its combat debut in Iraq. It has been a long, strange trip: the V-22 has been 25 years in development, more than twice as long as the Apollo program that put men on the moon. V-22 crashes have claimed the lives of 30 men — 10 times the lunar program's toll — all before the plane has seen combat. The Pentagon has put $20 billion into the Osprey and expects to spend an additional $35 billion before the program is finished. In exchange, the Marines, Navy and Air Force will get 458 aircraft, averaging $119 million per copy.

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By 1993, as the Osprey program approached its 12th birthday and Bill Clinton became President, the Marines had spent $13 billion on the planes. None were ready for war. In 1991 one of the first V-22s crashed when taking off for its maiden flight — because of improper wiring. A second crash killed seven in 1992. The Clinton Pentagon stuck with the program through the 1990s, but in 2000 two more V-22s crashed, killing 23 Marines. With that, the Marines grounded the Osprey for 18 months.

Probes into the deadly 2000 crashes revealed that in a rush to deploy the aircraft, the Marines had dangerously cut corners in their testing program. The number of different flight configurations — varying speed, weight and other factors — flown by test pilots to ensure safe landings was reduced by half to meet deadlines. Then only two-thirds of those curtailed flight tests were conducted. That trend continues: while a 2004 plan called for 131 hours of nighttime flight tests, the Marines managed to run only 33 on the Osprey. Why the shortcuts? Problems with a gearbox kept many V-22s and pilots grounded. That meant many pilots lacked the hours required to qualify for night flying. Similarly, sea trials were curtailed because the ship designated to assist with Osprey tests could spare only 10 of the 21 days needed.

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Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1665835,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

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This disasterous thing is being deployed to Iraq. Expect troop losses to increase upon its arrival.

According to the article 70% of the Marine's budget over the last several years has been spent on this this flying death trap. (Even the Army knew when to walk away from it.) Money that could have gone into body armor, armored vehicles, things that actually work and would save lives.

25 years in the making. Test being shortcut and failed. Many of its "must-have requirements" striped away when they couldn't be met. The thing even took off by itself!!

Reading about this reminds me of the fraud and waste that went into the Bradley Fighting Vehicle years ago. If you haven't ever seen the movie Pentagon Wars, it's worth a look. History repeats itself......sadly.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1665835-...