You raise some good points. The military, especially the Marines, needs to replace their large transport helicopters like the CH-46 and CH-53. Those helicopters date back to the Vietnam era and, as a rule, helicopters don't age well. The military needs the ability to transport personnel and equipment rapidly and that's what the V-22 was designed to do. However, being a hybrid vehicle (part helicopter and part fixed wing), it's a complicated beast. For example, it has a series of driveshafts and transmissions to route power from one propellor to the other in case of an engine failure. The more stuff something has, the easier it is to break. I've also had some major reservations about its hydraulic system. It operates at either 5,000 or 6,000 PSI, which is about the same pressure as used by hydrocutting machines. Nick a hydraulic line and the stream could come out with enough force to cut structure. Doesn't sound like a combat friendly system to me.

The F-22 has a lot of added capability over the F-15, primarily in the areas of stealth, better avionics, and supercruise. Stealth and the avionics give you the ability to detect and kill an enemy before he even knows you're there. That's a huge tactical advantage. Supercruise lets you get in and out of an area quickly without having to run the fuel sucking afterburners. Most fighters can empty their tanks in as little as 10-15 minutes when running on afterburners. The problems with the F-22 include very high cost and a host of software reliability issues. Like the Comanche, the F-22 has been in development since the early 1980s (Lockheed's Kelly Johnson must be spinning in his grave over that one).

Scout reconnaissance is a fundamental mission for land warfare. It may be possible to do the mission with UAVs, but many of them have very narrow fields of view. It's like trying to survey an area while looking through a soda straw. I'm concerned that may make it hard to perform the mission that the Comanche was designed to do. The Comanche is a stealth helicopter with a pretty good sensor package. It's designed to locate the enemy and radio the coordinates to other forces like Apache helicopters, coordinating the attack and reducing the exposure of the other aircraft. In that regard, it's a force multiplier like the F-117A, which can go in ahead of the conventional forces and take out air defenses or targets that are too well defended for non-stealthy platforms.