Some encouraging news for the Marines:
quote:Surprise! Pentagon's Panel Backs Osprey
Aero-news.net
April 19, 2001
The Marine Commandant, General James Jones, is pleased with a recommendation made yesterday by a DoD committee, that encourages further development and testing of the trouble-plagued V-22 Osprey.
The recommendation carries a strong caveat, the nature of which is that the Osprey isn't ready to be rushed into production.
The report, on which we are reporting today, will be formally given to SECDEF Rumsfeld early next week.
General Jones, whose backing of the program has never wavered, in the face of fatal crashes, engine fires, hydraulics failures, testing shortcuts, faulty software, falsified documents -- that General Jones -- said, "This is a capability our nation needs to meet the operational requirements of the 21st century," alluding to the fact that the Marines have, for a long time, put all their helicopter "eggs" into this one "basket."
Norman Augustine, a former chairman of Lockheed Martin, spoke on behalf of the (SECDEF Cohen-appointed) panel, and pointed out that the recommendation is a conditional one: “The V-22 is probably the best answer available. It’s not ready today, though, for operational use — not close to it,” he said, citing the need for a lot more engineering, development, and operational work on the craft.
(Other members of the study panel include Eugene Covert, professor emeritus of aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; retired Marine Corps Gen. John Dailey, who heads the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; and former Air Force Gen. J.B. Davis.)
The Marines, who have already spent over a billion dollars each for the Ospreys they received (rather than the still-staggering $40.1 million each, as claimed) and who don't seem to have a single economist or accountant on staff, said that canceling the program, which is slated to cost another $40 billion or so on top of that original $12 billion, would be "too expensive."
The program has yet to receive full congressional approval for funding.
The Osprey program, along with sixteen other developmental items on the Pentagon's plate, is also under scrutiny by President Bush's budget cutters.
Other projects under the microscope are the brilliant JSF, the F-22 Raptor, and the probably-safe F/A-18 upgrades.
[Because the Osprey is such an expensive project, and because it has substantial constituent bases in many key states, it is not likely to be canceled, regardless of performance.
Therefore, we can only hope that they spend enough of our dollars to make it into a good machine --ed.]
