{"id":183917,"date":"2012-10-06T05:40:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T10:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/06\/what-a-surprise-10\/"},"modified":"2012-10-06T05:40:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T10:40:00","slug":"what-a-surprise-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/06\/what-a-surprise-10\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Axe talks to a former USAF general who says that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/dangerroom\/2012\/10\/air-force-silenced-general\/\">his career was destroyed, and his retirement delayed in an attempt to cover up his report that was critical of the V-22 Osprey<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Don Harvel thought he was cruising to a well-deserved retirement after 35 years flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force. Then in the spring of 2010 he was tapped to investigate the fatal crash of a high-tech Air Force tiltrotor aircraft \u2013 and everything changed.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">What Harvel discovered about the controversial hybrid aircraft drew him into a battle of wills with his superiors at Air Force Special Operations Command. Harvel, then a brigadier general, uncovered evidence of mechanical problems \u2014 and resulting safety woes \u2014 in the V-22 Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. These are issues the Pentagon has been eager to downplay. So when Harvel refused to alter his findings to match the Defense Department\u2019s expectations, he knew that was the final chapter of his decades-long military service. Harvel\u2019s long-planned retirement was held up for more than two years, effectively silencing him during a troubling chapter in the Osprey\u2019s often-troubled history.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI turned [my report] in and I knew that my career was done,\u201d Harvel says.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But the stats reflect altered and miscategorized data. Engine fires clearly costing millions of dollars to fix were downgraded in the paperwork. One malfunction that resulted in a V-22 accidentally taking off uncommanded before crashing to the ground was labeled  a ground incident and left off the record. Even leaving out the 1991-2000 crashes, the Osprey\u2019s crash rate before this year\u2019s accidents was roughly double the officially stated figure, making the V-22 no safer than the Marines\u2019 conventional helicopters and far, far more dangerous than its fixed-wing cargo planes.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">And that\u2019s mostly due to inadequate testing, Harvel claims. \u201cIn their hurry to get this thing painted in a positive light for Congress, some things are coming back to haunt them,\u201d he says of the V-22\u2032s supporters.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We need to understand that the military establishment of the United States is completely captured by the defense industry, and this does not serve either our military needs or the interest of the taxpayers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Axe talks to a former USAF general who says that his career was destroyed, and his retirement delayed in an attempt to cover up his report that was critical of the V-22 Osprey: Don Harvel thought he was cruising to a well-deserved retirement after 35 years flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,970,1008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-corruption","category-defense-procurement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}