2012年8月3日金曜日

Wanna buy an Edsel?

Just because they built it doesn't mean people need it or want it.
Here's more on the Osprey helicopter:




Friday, Aug. 3, 2012


Osprey deployment makes no sense: ex-Pentagon official

Kyodo


WASHINGTON — A former U.S. Defense Department official who helped develop the Osprey aircraft has said their planned deployment to the Futenma air base in Okinawa is irrational, given their poor safety record.

"To put a machine like that . . . in a very, very densely populated part of the world in my view makes no sense and I'm not quite sure what military benefit you get out of it being there," Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985, said.

Korb, now with the Center for American Progress think tank, indicated that while the safety of the Osprey has improved, he is "still doubtful" about the aircraft's autorotation capability during an engine-out landing.

"It's a weapon system that should never have been built," he concluded. The former Pentagon official also stressed there is no urgent need to send MV-22s to the Futenma base, which is in a crowded district of Ginowan.