A bad aircraft is finally about to take part in a bad war.
Ten V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor planes, which cost 30 lives and $20 billion over a quarter century of development, have been deployed to Iraq.
Repeated efforts to kill the Osprey at the highest levels of the Pentagon, including by Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary, were unsuccessful.
Cheney and others argued that the Osprey was too dangerous and too expensive, but it has been a darling of the influential congressfolk in whose districts the Bell-Boeing aircraft was developed, tested and is finally being manufactured.
The Osprey — which costs $110 million each, including development costs — takes off and lands like a helicopter but tilts its engines forward to fly like an airplane.
Time magazine featured the aircraft on its cover last week in a highly critical article that called it “A Flying Shame.”
Please click here to read a round-up of war news at Kiko’s House.