SAS, I understand your frustration with the hype. I don't think there's an experienced military aviator who hasn't looked at the difference between the press clippings for a new system, and the acutal performance on the hardware they fly, and some of the shortcomings (I seem to remember a few: F-18 tail cracks, F-14 engine stalls in high performance maneuvers? T-45 that initially could not meet shipboard requirements due to spool up and nose wheel and ... and ... and ... SH-60 blade de-ice, early years, and a whole lot more).
We all ruefully acknowledge that what we fly is built under "minimum bid" and get on with it.
The B-2, of which there are lest than three dozen, costs over a billion per copy. (nucking futs, sez I.) It was the perfect aircraft for 1983. Didn't IOC till almost a decade later, yes? Should we have scrapped that?
The Bone had troubles with turkey buzzards. It's still flying, and does good work. Should it have never been?
The F-18A had some trouble with fuel legs in a fighter grid when it first came out. Did we scrap that aircarft? Should the Hornet have been scrapped, and an all F-14/A-6 Airwing been made, per Lehman's inane vision?
So the V-22 is expensive.
We agree that the cost is a salient shortcoming, but that cost growth happened over a period of years, the program was stalled or cancelled what, four different times?
But it's operational, and it works.
It seems to me that you are voicing a complaint that doesn't fit the year we are talking in. Every opportunity to scrap that program, as Comanche was scrapped, was presented, and yet it survived. (Remember, C-46 line re-opening decision, negative, happened early to mid 90's. There was never gonna be a new Phrog).
The operator who has posted here likes the bird, and he's an old Phrog pilot.
Maybe, SAS, your frustration is that none of us can go back in time and undo a variety of mistakes or errors. We can't.
As to other vehicles that the Marines need for the mission, I learned one thing a while back: you never get all the equipment you wish you had.
Cheers.