Grumpytroll, you certainly live up to your screenname! I see that you've been an esteemed member of PPRUNE since October of 2009. Hmm. You know something? THIS THREAD has been running since July of 2005. *BEFORE* shooting your mouth off (oops, too late!) why don't you do yourself a favor and read through the pages and learn something about the V-22, mm'kay? THEN come back and try to impress us with your knowledge of the subject at hand.
Oh, and it's not just your spelling that sucks.
ospreydriver, no matter how much experience you do (or do not) have, it really means nothing. I'm sorry if that makes you angry or bitter. Hey, you wanna kill me too like your butt-buddy mcpave? It'd be like me telling Bell, "Hey, I love the 206! This country needs the 206. You should keep building it!" They would pat me on the head and send me away with a caution that I do not have the Big Picture. Just as we do now with you.
The reality is that no PILOT can assess the real value of any aircraft. Sure, sure, we all know how much you loooooove the V-22. And in your (highly-inflated) opinion of yourself, this means that the V-22 is "worthy." Well guess what? A lot of us here...you know, the taxpayers who have to PAY for the thing...do *not* feel that it is a worthwhile thing to spend money on...no matter how much you like flying it or how valuable YOU think it is to the U.S.
It is not.
It's too hugely expensive and it has too many damn flaws. Yes, it's already in service but it can still be cancelled. And soon will be. No aircraft flies forever. Funding can be cut off. Production lines can be shut down. I believe the Osprey (and its drivers) are already in their sunset years. Another high-profile accident which cannot be definitively attributed to a specific cause could signal the death-knell of the "plane." Then they'll be hauled to the boneyard underneath an H-53. Two at a time.
SAS brought up a good question: How often are we changing V-22 engines in the field? And HOW MUCH do they cost? I think we taxpayers deserve to know. Me, I'm tired of living in a country with such a huge deficit. How much is it now, $1.3 trillion dollars? It doesn't help the situation when we keep crashing $87 million dollar V-22s that are doing the work of an H-53, as the Osprey that crashed back in April was doing.
Speaking of which, after all the BS has been shovelled, nobody has really made the case that the V-22 is doing things that the H-53 *cannot* do. And in fact, there are things that the H-53 *can* do that the V-22 cannot. People like to throw around modern buzzterms like, "It's shrinks the battlespace!" It sounds so futuristic! But the V-22 impresses exactly nobody if it only shrinks the battlespace below 5,000 feet in practical application (see the testimony in Gen. Harvel's report).
How long are those engines lasting in the field again?