First Hillbilly Armor, Now Osprey

(click for full size)

Michael Kamber, who is currently embedded in Iraq, passed this image along to The BAG.  Elegant in its composition, the relevance is not apparent until you read the caption:

US Marine rear door gunner on an Osprey plane looks down at Falluja as it gains altitude.  The plane flies with the rear door open.  The aircraft has been controversial; it takes off like a helicopter, then flies like a plane after the engines rotate.  It had been plagued by crashes during testing.

At a unit cost of $100 million, and after $15+ billion and 25 years of development, this contraption has just recently been introduced into Iraq.  TIME had an extensive report/exposé on the Osprey in late September.  According to the story, the vehicle is so precarious, Dick Cheney, himself, tried to do away with the program at least four times.

Whether or not the security of the aircraft is on the minds of these soldiers, it doesn't seem lost on Kamber.  The photo has an evidentiary quality -- documenting how, once again, flesh-and-blood soldiers are bearing the risk for a questionable capsule.  The photo also serves as something of a postcard:  I was actually up and inside one of these things, and saw it through to the other end.

V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame. TIME Report - 9.26.07
CNN Puff Piece 8.07
Crash Clip 1991
Osprey Bursts into Flames; "Significant Damage."  Wired - 11.9.07

(image:  Michael Kamber.  December 3, 2007.  Iraq.  Used by permission)

Comments

[gasho]

How ugly and dark, this beast that opens to the light of day only to point it's weapons at the very ground from which it came.

The gunner looks as if he's going into the light - with thin shaky legs and an elephant trunk for a penis. How odd, this deformed ugly offspring. His fellows tucked into the darkness of the machine, waiting to be reborn into a blinding desert light where they, too, can aim their weapons at the natives and impose the rule of the occupation.

Was is ugly. Even if we were fighting for some "good cause", the means are brutal, violent, and karmically toxic. The price we are paying for nothing is staggering. This Osprey is a bird born of Hell.

[gasho]

I was just reminded of a biblical quote that strikes me as appropriate here. This spawn of evil with his dangling machine gun pee pee evokes both sex and birth. The phrase I was reminded of?

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap"

[Rafael]

The Osprey is expensive and vulnerable to IR missiles. Loose one of those engine pods in the air, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

[jtfromBC]

Santa delivers a new predatory bird capable of carrying 26 elves to pursue and plunder more Iraqi families, just in time for Christmas.
Compliments of the season to you and yours.