Wired is running a feature on the history of V-22 Osprey – the problematic tilt-rotor chopper-plane. It’s a dramatic, big-screen epic of the relationship between politics and technology. And it illustrates how that conflict affects the people who were caught in the middle – the program managers whose careers were tied to the Osprey, the pilots who felt their concerns weren’t being addressed and the engineers felt pressured by Defense management and Congress:
A GAO report revealed that in 1997 and 1998, with pressure mounting to get the Osprey on budget and on schedule, program officials eliminated 70 of 103 planned tests, including rapid descent while carrying a full load. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing after the New River crash, program managers admitted they'd known about the hydraulic leak problem for six months. They hadn't corrected it, they testified, because an important funding deadline was approaching and the plane couldn't afford to fall any further behind schedule.
Sound familiar? Have you ever ignored that fleeting notion or flash of intuition that tells you something is just not right because you were behind schedule or already over budget? When you feel pressured into making trade-offs, like cutting out some testing, do you find that those decisions come back to haunt you?
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