DALLAS, Tx. – In a moment of rare introspection, the U.S. military is reportedly considering the once-unthinkable: maybe the V-22 Osprey, the infamous tilt-rotor aircraft, wasn't such a great idea after all.
The soul-searching comes after decades of defending the aircraft's exorbitant costs, high-profile crashes, and tendency to be more temperamental than a two-star general passed over for that third star.
The Osprey was originally pitched as the aviation equivalent of a Swiss Army knife but turned out to be more of a military-grade plastic spork — expensive, not particularly good at any one thing, and prone to snapping under pressure.
“We thought it was going to revolutionize modern warfare,” said General Bud Overcost, who recently took over the program. “But in hindsight, it seems to have revolutionized military budget overruns and crash investigation procedures instead. We thought modeling a military aircraft off of a cool toy from the G.I. Joe cartoons would work. But, well. Here we…
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