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Dunn: The V-22 is a 'crippled albatross which will continue killing' unless it is stopped.

In 1982, Bell and Boeing, the Seattle-based aerospace giant, formed a joint venture to push the new aircraft. Four years later, the two companies were rewarded for their effort with a $1.7 billion military contract. The following year, the Pentagon said it would purchase 913 V-22s at a cost of about $33.2 billion. The cost per aircraft: $36.4 million. But in 1988, the Army pulled out of the program, saying the V-22s were too expensive. At that point, the Pentagon reduced the scope of the program to a total of 657 aircraft: 552 V-22s for the Marines, 50 for the Navy, and 55 for the Air Force.

Then, the V-22 had its first crash landing--on Dick Cheney's desk.

In 1989, in his first appearance before Congress as George H. W. Bush's secretary of defense, Dick Cheney made it clear that things were going to be different. He said that tighter budgets required the Pentagon to cut wasteful spending. As part of the $9.7 billion to be cut from the Pentagon budget, Cheney said, the Pentagon had to drop the V-22 and "stay with established weapons programs where production lines are operating efficiently rather than pursue the development of unproven technology."

Cheney's budget proposal, not surprisingly, succeeded in pissing off just about everybody in Texas, and particularly in Fort Worth. At the time Cheney axed the V-22, only two other cities in America exceeded Fort Worth as recipients of federal defense dollars. The Pentagon was spending $3.4 billion per year in Fort Worth, primarily with Bell Helicopter and General Dynamics, which is now part of Lockheed Martin, the defense giant that builds the F-16 fighter, the F-22 stealth fighter, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As a whole, Texas was -- and still is -- getting more defense dollars than any other state, except for California and Virginia. Texas politicos were eager to make sure that the dollars kept flowing, as were powerful congressmen from Pennsylvania, where Boeing was to build the V-22's fuselage.

Shortly after Cheney presented his budget, the full House--led by the Texas and Pennsylvania delegations --overrode his decision on the V-22 and provided funding for the aircraft. In 1990, Cheney stuck to his guns and again refused to put any money in his budget for the V-22. Instead, he asked Congress to appropriate money for a cheaper medium-lift helicopter, one capable of carrying about two dozen people. Congress reversed Cheney again and authorized over $600 million for research and building of the V-22. Congress also prohibited the Pentagon from using any research and development funds on any aircraft that might replace the Osprey. The same scenario played out in 1991, with Cheney asking that no money be spent on the V-22 and Congress reversing him.

In April 1992, Cheney laid out his opposition to the aircraft in a letter to House Speaker Tom Foley. He said that while the V-22 has "some capabilities not found in less expensive alternatives, the increased capability is simply not affordable." Cheney pointed out that building six copies of the V-22 would cost $2.8 billion, which was $2 billion more than Congress had authorized for the project. Instead of being lauded for pointing out the obvious, Cheney was threatened with a lawsuit, by -- who else? -- a Texas-led congressional group. Two Texas Democrats -- U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and U.S. Rep. Pete Geren of Fort Worth -- along with other V-22 backers threatened to take Cheney to court if he didn't start spending the money they'd allocated for the V-22. About that same time, the House Armed Services Committee, which included three members from Texas and two from Pennsylvania, voted to fund the Osprey. It added another special provision to make sure that Cheney got the message: For each month that Cheney refused to provide funding for the Osprey, the staff of Cheney's Pentagon comptroller would be cut by 5 percent.

Three months later, in July 1992, the defense secretary capitulated. But Dick Cheney is a stubborn man. And he made it clear that despite Congress' view on the topic, he still hadn't changed his mind on the value of the tilt-rotor. In a letter to Senate Majority leader George Mitchell, Cheney said, "If the V-22 was unaffordable in 1989, it is even more unaffordable now ... . I remain convinced that we can find lower-cost alternatives to satisfy the needs of the armed forces for a medium-lift aircraft." Cheney agreed to provide the funding for the V-22, but he also said that he wanted work to begin on an alternative, less expensive helicopter. In addition, he said that the final decision on whether to go forward with the Osprey should be decided by a future Congress.

In 1993, the V-22 got a boost from Bill Clinton's election. As a candidate, Clinton worked to differentiate himself from George H.W. Bush by making it clear that he supported the V-22 project. With Cheney's letter in mind, the V-22's lobbyists worked to keep that support.

Chief among the lobbyists was Texas Gov. Ann Richards. In early 1993, Richards flew to Washington to meet with Pentagon officials about the program. After meeting with new Defense Secretary Les Aspin in February 1993, Richards told reporters that she was "sure glad to have someone in that office who is a friend of the V-22." She made another trip to Washington a year later, to make sure that the V-22 was still on schedule. She met with the new defense secretary, William Perry, for more than three hours about the project. She also met with Navy Secretary John Dalton, a man Richards described as "an enthusiastic supporter of the V-22."

Throughout the latter part of the 1990s, with Clinton's backing, the V-22 was able to avoid most of the budget fights that had plagued it during the tenure of George H. W. Bush. As for Richards, she worked as hard on the V-22's behalf after she left office as she had while in office.

Shortly after the 1994 election, in which she was defeated by George W. Bush, Richards passed through the golden revolving door and became yet another politician-turned-lobbyist. In 1996, Bell's parent company Textron paid her $80,000 to work on its behalf.

For the next few years, work continued on the V-22, and its backers began to relax. That is, until it began killing lots of Marines.

Lt. Col. Keith Sweaney was known among his fellow Marines as "Mister V-22." He was the Marines' most experienced V-22 pilot. He directed the testing program for the aircraft and was scheduled to take command of the first operation squadron of Ospreys in 2001. But that command never arrived.

In December 2000, while Sweaney was flying a V-22 in North Carolina, something went terribly wrong. Sweaney and three other Marines had taken the aircraft out for what should have been a routine night-flying testing mission. The weather was clear. Sweaney was flying at about 1,600 feet when he suddenly transmitted a one-word distress signal--"Mayday." About three minutes later, the aircraft crashed into the earth. All four men aboard were killed.

Before Sweaney's death, the Marines had been able to blame the previous V-22 crashes on pilot error. In June 1991, one of the V-22's development aircraft crashed, an incident later blamed on "miswiring of the flight control system." It had crash-landed, on its side, during a test flight. Fortunately, the pilots involved in the crash were not seriously hurt. In July 1992, a V-22 was trying to land at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia when one of the engines caught fire. Death toll: three Marines, four civilian contractors. In August 1992, another V-22 crashed, this one in Tarrant County. The crew survived, despite landing upside down on the tarmac of the Arlington Municipal Airport. The prototype crash was blamed on a maintenance error.

One of the worst crashes occurred in April 2000. While flying a V-22 in Mirana, Ariz., during a night training exercise, the pilot lost control "during a high-sink-rate descent and was unable to regain control before hitting the ground in a nose-down inverted attitude." The cause of the crash was a problem known as "vortex ring state." Death toll: 19 Marines. (More on vortex ring state in a moment.) Eight months later, Sweaney's aircraft crashed, an accident the Marines blamed on a combination of a hydraulic leak and a glitch in the flight-control software.

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