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Osprey has avoided ax, but still on block
By PAUL DE LA GARZA © St. Petersburg Times, published February 2, 2001 WASHINGTON -- In 1989, during the first Bush administration, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney rattled the Pentagon, Capitol Hill and the defense industry by announcing that he was canceling the V-22 Osprey aircraft project. At the time, Cheney said the program was too expensive. He also told lawmakers that missions intended for the V-22, specifically, ferrying troops deep inside enemy territory, could be performed by the very aircraft that it was scheduled to replace: Vietnam-era helicopters. But the defense secretary -- now vice president -- soon became mired in one of Washington's political truths: Once a Pentagon project is out of the gate, it is almost impossible to stop. Before too long, funding for the program was restored. According to defense analysts, the Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter but flies like an airplane, survived for three reasons: A powerful lobby in the Marine Corps, which had the biggest stake in the outcome of the program. Influential backers in Congress. Giant defense contractors that stood to reap billions in profits, not only with military use of the tilt-rotor aircraft, but with civilian use, as well. Labor unions, too, fought hard for the program's restoration. The main Osprey manufacturing plants in Texas and Pennsylvania are expected to employ 1,500 to 2,000 people each through 2014. But 12 years after Cheney tried to cancel the project -- and after almost $8-billion in research -- the Osprey has yet to go into full-scale production because of a series of mishaps, including three fatal crashes. Today, the $38-billion program has hit a new low. Fresh allegations of data manipulation by the Marines in order to push the program through have surfaced. While nobody expects it to die, everyone agrees that the Osprey is in for a rough and costly ride. "It just stands to reason that the program faces a very serious public relations challenge right now," said John Persinos, editor in chief of the helicopter trade magazine Rotor & Wing, who supports the Osprey. Earlier this month, the Pentagon received an anonymous letter with allegations that the commander of the lone Marine Osprey squadron, Lt. Col. Odin "Fred" Leberman, in New River, N.C., had ordered subordinates to lie about aircraft readiness until the program got the green light for full production. The letter writer, a self-described mechanic, said Leberman was guided by "the attitude that we have to have the plane whether or not it is ready." "Everything that is brought up as an issue is just brushed under the rug," the letter said. "This might be a great plane one day, but not today." The letter and an audiotape that reportedly implicated Leberman, who subsequently was relieved of his command, have prompted a Pentagon investigation. In a letter last week to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., warned that the Osprey could be in trouble on the Hill. "Congress has consistently supported this program," they wrote. "However, this program will not be able to move forward unless and until the Defense Department has restored confidence in the integrity of the V-22 program and the people managing it." According to Levin, the preliminary investigation suggests that Leberman acted with the knowledge of his superiors. Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of Congress, recently concluded in a 31-page report that the Pentagon would incur "significant risk" if it approved full production of the V-22. The aircraft, the GAO said, may prove unsafe and cost more than forecast to maintain. But the Marine Corps finds itself in a quandary: It has no system to fall back on. Its war planners, enamored with the tilt-rotor technology, put all their eggs in the Osprey basket. Even if they wanted to substitute helicopters for the Osprey, as Cheney had suggested, the assembly line has been dismantled, and, analysts say, getting it back online would prove costly and time-consuming. Which puts even more pressure on Congress to fund the Osprey program. Analysts note that while Congress doesn't mind saying no to the president, it loathes saying no to the armed services. In forecasting the program's survival, Persinos echoed the sentiments of other analysts. "A lot's at stake," he said. "Billions of dollars. A lot of jobs. And a few decades of research." Still, with some members of Congress smelling blood, analysts say they might try to drain money from the Osprey for their own pet projects. In the end, analysts say, the most likely scenario is that Congress will slash the size of the program. The Marines, for example, poised to get the bulk of the aircraft -- 360 -- might end up with half that number, or perhaps fewer. The Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa is on line to get 50 modified versions of the aircraft. As the drama unfolds, the Marine Corps' eight test aircraft remain grounded. Asked what it would take to kill the program, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon would have to await the results of the various investigations before proceeding. Christopher M. Jones, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb, has studied the politics of the Osprey, a program that spans two decades. He is amazed by its political durability. "I think the most remarkable quality of the V-22," Jones said, "is its ability to survive." At this point, he said, the only way that the program could be killed is if engineers find "an inherent problem in the technology." Even in his attempt to cancel the Osprey project, Jones noted that Cheney never questioned the tilt-rotor concept. Under the direction of President Bush, however, the administration has begun to review the Pentagon's major weapons systems, including the Osprey, the Defense Department's sixth-costliest weapons program. And Cheney could still be the wild card. "The line between bitter feelings and honest conviction isn't as wide as people think," said Richard Aboulafia, a military aircraft analyst for the Teal Group in Washington. If Cheney still feels the same way about the Osprey, he said, it won't be hard for him to tell the Pentagon "that plane isn't the right thing." But in an effort to bolster support for the program, the key contractors in the Osprey saga, Boeing Co.'s helicopter division and Textron's Bell Helicopter, have spread out the pie to various subcontractors, with work on the Osprey now under way in 42 states, including Florida. With at least three investigations under way, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, a supporter of the Osprey, urged caution. Insisting "we've got to take a timeout" and review the program, Gramm said, "I don't want the plane used by the Marine Corps until it's safe." Signaling that he was not quite ready to sacrifice the program, Gramm mirrored the comments of supporters who point out that any new technology has its kinks, including the Osprey. "We've got to fix it," the senator said. "However long it takes, is what we are going to have to do."
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