| True, but I don't know too many military aircraft programs that haven't had their share of similar problems early on, often a lot worse. That's what gets me the most about these stories, it's the total lack of knowledge of history and perspective. As if the Osprey was the first program to encounter problems during development - NOT!
Still, it's obvious project management on the Osprey has left a lot to be desired. But in the end it will be a great weapons system, giving us new capabilities that no other nation will have (until they get their own Ospreys or equivalent, which I'm sure will happen now that the US has opened the path - at quite an expense for sure, but that's the price we pay for being technology leaders; same applies to the F-22).
And Hoverbug's right on as far as the CV-22/HH-47 roles and missions...
FVD |
The unit cost of these things is about 5 times more than any other combat rotorcraft our armed forces have acquired previously, so the public anxiety is certainly understandable, if not especially well informed.
There are really two questions here. Does the technology mesh with the mission? - I think only time will tell on that one. The other question is whether the problems we are seeing are emblematic of larger procurement issues. Bell has not had a good track record of complex program integration. The H-1 (UH-1Y/AH-1Z) program guys in the Marine Corps have been red in the face for a while, but thats nothing compared with the Army and the ARH-70, where the Bell boys seem to get taken to the woodshed on a weekly basis. The problem with these uber complex weapon systems these days is that to make them politically survivable, you have to subcontract sytems out all over the map (rather than vertically integrating like the old days), which makes the program management a nightmare and sometimes it leads to overly complex designs. Hard to know whose more at fault - the contractors or their Pentagon overseers. The (horizontal) consolidation in the defense industry has not been a good thing for this country. Take a good look at the Coast Guard's Deep Water program. There are some big name defense contractors that should be tarred and feathered over that one. When we look back in ten years at the amount of money that we flushed down the crapper on Homeland Security without any accountability just in the past 5 years, I think we are all going to be sick.
BTW, the latest rumor is that the whole CSAR-X program is going in the bin because the Air Force's attempt at meeting the requirements under the successful contract contestment by Boeings competitors has been shot down. The requirement isn't going away, but it may be rolled into a helicopter-borne missile support requirement and the new helo would fill both missions. Anyway, it looks like the HH-47 is down for the count, at least for the time being.
10-19-2007, 10:40 PM 
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