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V-22
The U.S. military faces two fundamental challenges. The first is the need to downsize in the face of increasing budgetary pressures. The second is the requirement to continue to conduct a broad array of missions around the world. While senior defense officials have begun to sound warnings that the
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Date:
12/14/2012
It appears that the Light Air Support program is the latest casualty of the Pentagon's notoriously complicated acquisition process. The program was supposed to acquire 20 small "non-developmental" aircraft for use by Afghan pilots in conducting reconnaissance and ground attacks against the Taliban
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Date:
4/16/2012
I used to work for the man who was the first to try and kill the V-22 Osprey, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Both have proved to be very hard to kill. Both have withstood an onslaught of negative press that undoubtedly would have killed lesser men or weapons systems. Both have risen from
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Date:
4/16/2012
Oh no. This is terrible. The program that critics of defense spending love to hate is becoming a normal acquisition program. What are the F-35 deniers to do? Well, they could go after the V-22 Osprey. Whoops, that’s not a good answer. The Osprey is performing amazingly well in combat and has the
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Date:
11/2/2011
The most maligned weapons system in modern times is turning out to also be the most versatile, and maybe the safest. The V-22 Osprey was used last month to rescue a downed fighter pilot in Libya, opening a new chapter in the fast-growing chronicle of tilt-rotor successes. Many critics lost track
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Date:
4/5/2011
Here's a surprise: the V-22 Osprey has turned into the safest, most survivable rotorcraft the U.S. Marine Corps operates. The Osprey had its first fatal accident in ten years last April during a combat mission in Afghanistan, when an Air Force version hit the ground at high speed. But because
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Date:
2/16/2011
Two months ago the co-chairmen of the president's bipartisan deficit commission issued a series of proposals for narrowing the gap between federal income and expenses. One section of their proposals concerned how annual defense spending could be trimmed $100 billion by fiscal year 2015. That was
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Date:
1/4/2011
It must be a tough job running the U.S. Air Force these days. It's still the most powerful aerospace force in the world, but every week its leaders participate in choices that eventually will call that status into question. First its family of future radar planes was killed. Then the revolutionary
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Date:
9/20/2010
There is an urban legend which can trace its roots back to the 1930s that the bumble bee with its large body and relatively tiny wings was an aerodynamic impossibility. As some observers commented, the bumble bee flew because it did not know that it was scientifically impossible for it to do so.
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Date:
8/6/2010
The Boeing Company disclosed today that it intends to be a bidder in the competition to build a next-generation presidential helicopter. It said it had purchased the rights to build a domestic version of the AgustaWestland EH101 helicopter -- the same rotorcraft that Lockheed Martin offered in
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Date:
6/7/2010
The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor is the “Energizer bunny” of defense programs. It has survived repeated attempts to kill the program. It overcame a series of tragic accidents and initial production problems. Now in full rate production, the V-22 is proving itself to be everything its advocates envisioned
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Date:
3/3/2010
A draft overview of the defense department's fiscal 2011 budget request highlights a handful of weapons programs as key to current and future military operations. The document was leaked last week, but media reports have only mentioned a small portion of its content. The chapter of the overview
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Date:
1/27/2010