"Since arriving at this sprawling desert base in western Iraq, a dozen Ospreys have been ferrying troops and equipment at forward operating bases. One even took around Barack Obama during his tour of Iraq earlier this year.

But on only a handful of occasions has the aircraft faced any serious enemy fire.

"Military officials say this is partly a result of the changing nature of the war in Iraq as well as the advantages the high-flying Osprey has over the Vietnam-era Sea Knight helicopters they will eventually replace. The Osprey also avoids day flights into Baghdad or other tasks that entail excessive risk.

"It's not the same World War II tactics that we used to deal with, or even Vietnam tactics," said Maj. Paul Kopacz, who led two Ospreys on a recent mission to Fallujah. "We have not been battle-tested because we aren't going guns blazing into hot zones. Our nation is now too sensitive to the loss of soldiers to let that happen."

The problem here is that the machine is a battlefield failure. If it could not fly into Baghdad during the day it could not insert folks into hot zones and, worse, it cannot retreive them, either. So an entire fleet of aircraft must be maintained for combat situations. At this point the Osprey seems to be considered a slow, vulnerable, unreliable light transport.

And all of the 21st century military VTOL eggs are in that basket. I don't know of a state-of-the-art VTOL which has been developed to take the place of those used in combat.

Too bad. Maybe if they could build upon the Osprey experience to build a smaller, faster and more reliable craft.

Arf