That thing is a POS and is a ripp off of the Marine Corps. Bell Helicopter really stuck it to uncle sam. Marine corps would have been better off with something like the eh-101  or if you just had to have the fixed wing  flying characteristics something like the rotodyne The V22 is a money pit

it is still not a good aircraft for the money. It is not a dirt field aircraft, It uses a 5k PSI hyd system that issue maybe resolved with GSE gear that can handle the pressure and the flow. The aircraft also uses cryo hydraulic fittings requiring liquid nitrogen. The down wash is incredible more than anything else in the air. And the thing is as big as a shitter with really no more space than a ch46.  The wing stow issues may have been solved to the point of being a normal routine. It's combat record is ok because other aircraft are available. The capability the aircraft brings I just don't think is worth the financial and logistical cost. There are maybe better solutions but do to our corrupt military procurement it is not possible to find or develop anything cheaper.

  It is the future by default because nothing else is available.  Hey and don't worry fellas I don't have the power to cancel military contracts. Your favorite neat thing is safe  

 

Skylark your information is sadly wrong.  Do not use wikipedia for your information.  What is posted on wikipedia are blatant lies.  For the real operational numbers for payload and distance carried read the OPEVAL of the V-22 not the PR BS. 

 

For the tidbits you should be interested in you can read it here:

 

Link didn't get pasted right.  Sorry

If the military and Congress listened to people like you in 1949, our best fighter would still be the Bearcat.  Seriously, you site a report that is nearly 7 years old, based on a study that is 12 years old and you tell me to not believe everything I read, and that the propaganda is moving only from my side of the issue?  Remember when the press and the pundits dubbed the F-117 as the "wobbly-goblin"?  Can you tell me just how wobbly, unreliable and ineffective the F-117 was when it took out Iraq's command and control single handed with ZERO losses?  Remember all those years (I am old enough so I at least remember) when the F-18 was condemned by the press and the "experts" because it did not perform to specs in matters of cost, range, payload roll-rate, etc.  Do you think we should have abandoned the F-18 and stuck with the cheaper, sub-sonic A4?  The F-14 Tomcat was extremely complicated, hideously expensive (by 1960's standards) and suffered accidents while in testing (One due to hydraulic failure) and in service.  Can you tell me the Tomcat was a bad investment and that ANY other aircraft could have done what the Tomcat did in it's lifetime?  The M1-Abrams was labeled by the "experts" to be too expensive, too heavy, too complicated and too unreliable to survive in any combat environment, let alone in the dust of Iraq's/Kuwait's deserts.  Can you tell me which side and in which tank (U.S./M1 vs Iraq/T-72) you would have preferred to be when the Battle of 73-Easting took place?  (I'll even spot you ten-to-one odds if you pick Iraq.) The point is exaggerating statistics happens on both sides, so it is necessary to consider the motives of the "experts" and maybe use a little forward thinking and consider where this concept is going.  Personally, I would trust a soldier in the field over a pencil-necked, paper-pusher with and agenda any day, and it looks like, so far at least, the soldiers are pretty happy with the V-22.  If the Osprey was as unsafe and unreliable as you claim it to be, don't you think the press would be all over that story, wailing 24/7 like coal-miner's widows about the dangers posed by the military industrial complex?  Just like the M-1 before it, the V-22 seems to be defying the "experts" by performing just fine in the field, which is an impressive accomplishment for something dubbed inadequate by the "experts".  Is the V-22 expensive?  Yes.  Is the V-22 a replacement for the helicopter?  No, of course not, no one is saying that, but there are missions out there in which the Osprey has proved to be invaluable, and maybe, if we stick with it, the answer in the future could be 'yes'.  The F-117 pioneered stealth which is being incorporated in the F-22 and F-35 and that technology is being copied everywhere, because stealth is becoming as critical to a fighter as radar was in the 1950s.  The same can be said of tilt-rotor technology if we don't panic and run back to the bi-plane just because mono-planes can be unstable.  Bugs get ironed out, pilots develop techniques to overcome flight quirks and new insights are discovered by trial and error which will lead to newer and better concepts down the road.  The F-89 sucked as an interceptor, but today we build the best fighter jets in the world.  Just think if we gave up back then because jets were too expensive, too complicated, too unreliable, had too short a range and existing prop planes could already do the same job for less money?  The key is not squashing new ideas because they don't measure up to the latest Sci-Fi movie special effect, and deciding that VTOL technology has reached it's pinnacle, with helicopters as our ONLY future.  Sometimes an investment cannot be calculated on a single platform, but instead should be measured by the potential dividends it could pay us down the road.

  

 

Bummer can spend trillions and can't tell you where it went, but refused to fund military assets, especially if they work.  

 

Ole Sarge