Word: osprey
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...read your article "Wounded Osprey" [NATION, Feb. 5], an old saying kept popping into my mind: "Necessity is the mother of invention." What necessitates the use of this aircraft? The cold war is over, and we are not at war. So why is the military so careless with the lives of those who must take the risk of flying the Osprey? This nation put a man on the moon in less time than it has taken to get this aircraft off the ground with doors that open and functional cooling-heating and communications systems. Sometimes the art of being...
...even if the plane is safe, there are pressing concerns about the military value of the V-22. While the Marines insist the Osprey is ready for production, it has not been approved for combat maneuvers and lacks its required gun. The winds created by its dual 38-ft. rotors are so strong that landing in a desert kicks up sand "brownouts" that can blind pilots and rescuing someone from the sea is made extremely difficult. Marines climbing down ropes from Ospreys in combat simulations aboard ships or oil platforms have to hit the deck and stay there until...
...Osprey's real bugaboo is the amount of maintenance it requires, which is why Leberman ordered his troops to falsify records. "Maintainers are being told they have to lie on maintenance records to make the numbers look good," a V-22 mechanic said in an anonymous letter to the Pentagon. What is amazing is how bad the numbers are--even after the deception. A recent independent review, apparently incorporating the misleading data, said the V-22s were fully prepared for their missions just 20% of the time, well short of the corps' 75% requirement. An Osprey crash last April...
Despite these concerns, Marine officers say, the Pentagon was well on its way to approving full-scale production. Then a December Osprey crash killed four Marines and, a month later, disclosures about the fudged records put that decision on hold. For now, the Pentagon's 12 Ospreys remain grounded...
...more than a decade ago that Dick Cheney, who was then running the Pentagon, tried to kill the program because of its high price tag. But the corps and its allies on Capitol Hill waged war against him and won. Now a new battle over the Osprey looms. If Vice President Cheney decides to wage war again, this time he will come far better armed...