@Tigerfish, I am pretty sure that Jack lived through the "crowd killer" years of the CH-53. A lot of my Marine friends referred to the E as both "the ****ter" and "the crowd killer." I was given to understand that the latter nickname was in honor of an accident in the 80's where we lost one in WestPac with all hands (30+ dead), with a tail problem. Your questioning his objectivity is not well played.
Some years later, when I had occasion to be involved in things like depot level maintenance and SLEP, the CH-53 was still "enjoying" oil canning problems in the tail boom. (Not sure if the K design has figured that out but I hope it did). For all of the difficulty, the CH-53E is a magnificent beast, and formed the back bone of USMC heavy lift for 3 decades and still is. Flying one, when I got the chance, was an eye opener.
Osprey has found its niche, and is a performer. Don't look back, the future looks pretty good.
JackCarson: V-22 versus spare parts and ECP's ... those were different pots of money. The O&M funds would get raided first while APN-1 funds (and a few other categories of acquisition money) could be protected. (Were that not the case Comanche would never have gotten as far as it did ...) We had similar problems in the 90's with O&M funds being raided for yet another OOTW boondoggle, thanks to our academics who want to save the world and shut up CNN's Christiania Amanpur (they never succeeded in that) killing our spares for P-3's and SH-60's to name but two TMS that I am painfully familiar with. It wasn't Osprey's fault, and it wasn't F-18 E/F's fault. It was how money can and can't be "changed of color" by the rules Congress provides ... and then there's the shell game. *better stop, getting a bad flashback*