Leaders, experts slam Time article on Osprey

Marine officials, defense analysts defend Osprey (pic from Marine Corps Times)

Leaders, experts slam Time article on Osprey
By John Hoellwarth - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Oct 14, 2007 9:39:00 EDT

The Corps’ MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft will crash eventually, and Marines will die. That much is certain. The same can be said of virtually every aircraft in the military inventory.

Marine officials conceded the point in the wake of an eight-page Oct. 8 cover story in Time magazine titled “A Flying Shame.” The article highlighted the Osprey’s checkered past and called into question the capability, safety, economy and wisdom of fielding an aircraft that hovers like a helicopter and flies like a plane on the eve of its combat debut in Iraq.

It’s “silly” to expect the Osprey to be the military’s first crash-proof aircraft, said Col. Glenn Walters, a former Osprey squadron commander and pilot now serving as head of the Corps’ aviation plans, programs and budget branch.

The Time article describes how “narrow interests” kept the Osprey alive in Congress despite schedule and cost overruns throughout its 25-year development. It tells how specifications were modified — and eliminated — as the prototypes failed to meet them. Ultimately, the article says the Corps is putting Marines’ lives in “jeopardy” by putting them in the Osprey.

But what the article leaves out, said senior Marine leaders, civilian and military aviation experts, a Washington think tank and at least one of the “critics” quoted by Time, is the aircraft’s true status.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/10/marine_osprey_071014/



uhc comment: I've posted Osprey articles in this forum previously.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=4307
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=5009
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=5035