Cost

I am reading about cost effectiveness and military aircraft procurement.

the author has some valid points and I agree with many, but he's missing something vital about one thing.

V-22A is not a helicopter.  It's a totally new form of aircraft.  His proposal to save money by buying helicopters ignores the main reason the Osprey was considered at all.  Speed and range.  It is a quantum leap in performance over a helo with the same lift capacity.

He cites money spent and lives lost and how it should have been scrapped long ago.

Pray; tell me how much was spent making fixed wing aircraft as safe and reliable as they are today?  How many lives lost pursuing rotary wing?

The V-22 is neither a plane nor a helicopter.  The entire regimen between flight modes is unique and was unknown until they actually flew them.  There were lots of places where it simply could not be known until someone did it.  Too many to test every single one.  Because of this a huge consideration is not even the machine, but the pilot.  At least one of the "let's end the program it's killing people" accidents was because the pilot was still flying a plane and not yet flying a helicopter, even though his aircraft was no longer flying like a plane.  The phenomenon was well known and understood by rotary wing pilots, but the Osprey pilot hadn't changed modes in his mind.  A mode change that a chopper pilot never has to make.