Sun, Apr 10, 2011
Tilt-Rotor Aircraft Is Spending Watchdog's "Spending Cut Of The
Week"
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its weekly
spending cut alert on Thursday, which aimed directly at the USMC's
V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft designed to fly as fast as a
turboprop airplane while retaining the ability to take off and land
vertically. The group points out that, between 1993 and 2007,
taxpayers spent $22 billion on the V-22, and 30 Marines lost their
lives due to equipment malfunctions, all before the aircraft ever
entered combat.
CAGW points out that Richard Whittle’s book “The
Dream Machine” called the project a “poster child for
what’s wrong with the defense acquisition system.”
Despite numerous attempts to kill the aircraft, including one by
then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1989, the project kept
getting funded. Politicians and lobbyists from Texas and
Pennsylvania, where the aircraft is produced by Bell Helicopter and
Boeing, respectively, formed the Tiltrotor Technology Coalition in
1990, and by 2008 the Department of Defense had approved a $10.8
billion procurement program.
The group says the V-22 has repeatedly proven itself to be
dangerous and expensive while failing to meet the performance
objectives set out in the original project. It was designed to be
an assault aircraft, but has been used almost exclusively for
transport, and its ability to fly aggressively under duress has not
been proven. A 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report
stated that the V-22 “can complete missions assigned in
low-threat environments,” but that “challenges may
limit its ability to accomplish the full repertoire of missions of
the legacy helicopters it is replacing.” In other words,
despite operations and support costs that have been estimated at
$75 billion for the completion of the program, the V-22 is in some
ways worse than its predecessors. The GAO concluded that
“alternatives should be re-considered.”
File Photo
“Marines receive roughly 5 percent of the country’s
defense budget and are an integral part of nearly all combat and
aid missions,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
“However, the V-22 project is among the most egregious
illustrations of the Defense Department’s inefficient
procurement process, which on average results in research and
development cost overruns of 42 percent and 22 month delays,
according to a GAO report from March of 2009. As Congress wages
fiscal war over a few billion dollars in cuts to $3.8 trillion
budget, these albatrosses – at $122 million apiece –
should be scrapped.”
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