Word: osprey
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...past few days over sexual harassment allegations by the Army's top woman officer, must have been thinking things couldn't get much worse. But they did, with the deaths Saturday of 19 Marines in the crash and explosion of an experimental helicopter-airplane hybrid, the MV-22 Osprey, in Arizona. The aircraft, remaining examples of which have been grounded pending an inquiry, is manufactured by Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing and was in a final test phase before its anticipated introduction into Marine fleets. This is hardly the first time the Osprey has been in the spotlight...
...despite the resurgent reliability concerns, says TIME Washington correspondent Mark Thompson, the Osprey's progress will continue to be stymied by economic worries, not safety fears. "Since it was introduced in 1981, the Osprey has been considered good technology, but at too high a price," says Thompson. "[Bush secretary of defense] Dick Cheney tried repeatedly to kill the program, but support in Congress was too strong to overcome." The debate now, says Thompson, is over whether this revolutionary aircraft - which uses tilt-rotor technology, enabling it to take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a plane...
...Four's a good number," he tells me. "We'll say you caught a few. It'll sound like more." We watch an air show: an osprey scares off a bald eagle that has probably come too close to its nest...
Last week the first of 458 V-22 Ospreys finally landed in the Pentagon's front yard, greeted by Pentagon brass and the Marine Band. But the program has had powerful critics from the start. The Bush Administration tried to kill it, saying its $79 million-a-copy price tag was too steep. The Army has refused to buy the Osprey, citing its cost. Pentagon officials acknowledge that the Cobra's crash--and Bell's role in it--could complicate the Marines' efforts to keep buying V-22s because of doubts it might raise about Bell. "If the Marines come...
...Osprey...