V-22 Osprey Archives - Foreign Policy In Focus

V-22 Osprey

Osprey Outrage on Okinawa

by Seamus Murphy | Nov 2, 2012

Peace and tranquillity never really seem to last long in Okinawa. Looking over the dark blue Pacific on a cloudy morning, an Okinawan fisherman will hear a steady drone emanating from a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft. As it thunders low over the island’s small houses, the deafening roar from four Rolls-Royce engines drowns out school teachers and rattles window panes. The behemoth descends to land at Kadena Airbase and calm is temporarily restored.

The Plane That Won’t Die…Or Fly

by Miriam Pemberton | Apr 26, 2007

Calling the V-22 Osprey a Rube Goldberg contraption does some disservice to the late cartoonist who died in 1970. Vice President Dick Cheney tried to kill the V-22 in the early 1990s, when he was defense secretary. But it lives on today, and the Marine Corps announced on April 13 that in September it will begin flying its first combat missions in Iraq. A combination helicopter-plane with bells and whistles galore might have appealed to Rube, but he wouldn’t have unveiled it in public until he’d made it work.

Is This Any Way to Secure a Country?

by Lawrence Korb, Miriam Pemberton | Jul 10, 2006

This is what passes for a security debate in the halls of Congress these days. The House and Senate Armed Services committees are on track to hand the president the 460-odd-billion-dollar military budget he asked for, give or take a billion or two.