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It's hard to imagine an American weapons program so fraught with problems that Dick Cheney would try repeatedly to cancel it — hard, that is, until you get to know the Osprey. As Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush, Cheney tried four times to kill the Marine Corps's ungainly tilt-rotor aircraft. Four times he failed. Cheney found the arguments for the combat troop carrier unpersuasive and its problems irredeemable. "Given the risk we face from a military standpoint, given the areas where we think the priorities ought to be, the V-22 is not at the top of the list," he told a Senate committee in 1989. "It came out at the bottom of the list, and for that reason, I decided to terminate it." But the Osprey proved impossible to kill, thanks to lawmakers who rescued it from Cheney's ax time and again because of the home-district money that came with it — and to the irresistible notion that American engineers had found a way to improve on another great aviation breakthrough, the helicopter.

Now the aircraft that flies like an airplane but takes off and lands like a chopper is about to make its combat debut in Iraq. It has been a long, strange trip: the V-22 has been 25 years in development, more than twice as long as the Apollo program that put men on the moon. V-22 crashes have claimed the lives of 30 men — 10 times the lunar program's toll — all before the plane has seen combat. The Pentagon has put $20 billion into the Osprey and expects to spend an additional $35 billion before the program is finished. In exchange, the Marines, Navy and Air Force will get 458 aircraft, averaging $119 million per copy.

The saga of the V-22 — the battles over its future on Capitol Hill, a performance record that is spotty at best, a long, determined quest by the Marines to get what they wanted — demonstrates how Washington works (or, rather, doesn't). It exposes the compromises that are made when narrow interests collide with common sense. It is a tale that shows how the system fails at its most significant task, by placing in jeopardy those we count on to protect us. For even at a stratospheric price, the V-22 is going into combat shorthanded. As a result of decisions the Marine Corps made over the past decade, the aircraft lacks a heavy-duty, forward-mounted machine gun to lay down suppressing fire against forces that will surely try to shoot it down. And if the plane's two engines are disabled by enemy fire or mechanical trouble while it's hovering, the V-22 lacks a helicopter's ability to coast roughly to the ground — something that often saved lives in Vietnam. In 2002 the Marines abandoned the requirement that the planes be capable of autorotating (as the maneuver is called), with unpowered but spinning helicopter blades slowly letting the aircraft land safely. That decision, a top Pentagon aviation consultant wrote in a confidential 2003 report obtained by TIME, is "unconscionable" for a wartime aircraft. "When everything goes wrong, as it often does in a combat environment," he said, "autorotation is all a helicopter pilot has to save his and his passengers' lives."

The Plane That Wouldn't Die

In many ways, the V-22 is a classic example of how large weapons systems have been built in the U.S. since Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961 of the "unwarranted influence" of "the military-industrial complex." The Osprey has taken years to design, build, test and bring to the field. All that time meant plenty of money for its prime contractors, Bell Helicopter and the Boeing Co. As the plane took shape and costs increased, some of its missions were shelved or sidelined. And yet, with the U.S. spending almost $500 billion a year on defense — not counting the nearly $200 billion annually for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — there's plenty of money for marginal or unnecessary programs. Pentagon reform and efficiency are far less of a cause among lawmakers today than during the years of Ronald Reagan's comparatively modest defense-spending boom. "Almost every program the U.S. military is now buying takes longer to develop, costs more than predicted and usually doesn't meet the original specifications and requirements," says Gordon Adams, who oversaw military spending for the Office of Management and Budget during Bill Clinton's Administration.

The Marine Corps likes to boast that it spends only a nickel out of every Pentagon dollar and makes do with cheaper weapons than the other services. The story of the V-22 belies that image: It's a tale of how a military service with little experience overseeing aircraft programs has wound up with a plane that may be as notable for its shortcomings as for its technological advances.

First, some history. Because Marines deploy aboard ships, the service's chiefs have always hungered for vertical lift — aircraft that could take off and land from small decks and fly far inland to drop off combat-ready troops. As the Marines' Vietnam-era CH-46 choppers became obsolete, commanders started to dream of an aircraft that would give them more options when considering an amphibious assault. The dreams intensified following the failed Desert One mission in 1980 to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. In the course of the operation, three helicopters broke down, leading to an order to abort the entire endeavor, and a fourth chopper collided with a C-130 aircraft at a desert base, killing eight U.S. troops. That sent Pentagon bureaucrats hunting for a transport that could be used by all four military services and prevent another fiasco. Reagan, who took office the year after Desert One, began to pour money into the Pentagon, particularly for research and design into new weapons and combat systems. The Osprey was born.

Originally, the program was designed to churn out the first of more than 1,000 tilt-rotors in less than 10 years for $40 million each. But this was no conventional plane. The Osprey may cruise like an airplane, but it takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter. The technical challenge of rotating an airplane's wings and engines in midair led to delays, which in turn led to an ever higher price tag. As expenses rose, the Pentagon cut the number of planes it wanted to buy, which in turn increased the unit price. Citing rising costs, the Army abandoned the project in 1983.

That left the relatively tiny Marine Corps footing most of the bill for the project — the V-22 accounts for nearly 70% of its procurement budget — and overseeing a program larger and more technically challenging than any the service was accustomed to managing. Sensing weakness at the Pentagon, congressional supporters, largely from the V-22's key manufacturing states of Texas (Bell Helicopter) and Pennsylvania (Boeing), created the Tilt-Rotor Technology Coalition to keep the craft alive, despite Cheney's opposition. They were aided by nearly 2,000 V-22 suppliers, in more than 40 states, who pressured their lawmakers to stick with the program. And so, despite Cheney's doubts, the Osprey survived.

By 1993, as the Osprey program approached its 12th birthday and Bill Clinton became President, the Marines had spent $13 billion on the planes. None were ready for war. In 1991 one of the first V-22s crashed when taking off for its maiden flight — because of improper wiring. A second crash killed seven in 1992. The Clinton Pentagon stuck with the program through the 1990s, but in 2000 two more V-22s crashed, killing 23 Marines. With that, the Marines grounded the Osprey for 18 months.

Probes into the deadly 2000 crashes revealed that in a rush to deploy the aircraft, the Marines had dangerously cut corners in their testing program. The number of different flight configurations — varying speed, weight and other factors — flown by test pilots to ensure safe landings was reduced by half to meet deadlines. Then only two-thirds of those curtailed flight tests were conducted. That trend continues: while a 2004 plan called for 131 hours of nighttime flight tests, the Marines managed to run only 33 on the Osprey. Why the shortcuts? Problems with a gearbox kept many V-22s and pilots grounded. That meant many pilots lacked the hours required to qualify for night flying. Similarly, sea trials were curtailed because the ship designated to assist with Osprey tests could spare only 10 of the 21 days needed.

There's also been controversy over a sandstorm test for the craft. The V-22's tendency to generate a dust storm when it lands in desert-like terrain wasn't examined because "an unusually wet spring resulted in a large amount of vegetation that prevented severe brownouts during landing attempts," the Pentagon's top tester noted. But the program continued, albeit with a caution about the aircraft's ability to fly in dusty conditions.

The Engine-Failure Problem

After the 2000 grounding, Osprey pilots were told to fly less aggressively, which critics say is the only reason no V-22 has crashed since. "They keep talking about all the things it can do, but little by little its operations are being more and more restricted," says Philip Coyle, who monitored the V-22's development as the Pentagon's top weapons tester from 1994 to 2001. The V-22 can fly safely "if used like a truck, carrying people from one safe area to another safe area," he says. "But I don't see them using it in combat situations where they will have to do a lot of maneuvering."

The Marines contend that the V-22 is an assault aircraft and that no pilot who finds himself dodging bullets is going to fly it gently. "The airplane is incredibly maneuverable," says Lieut. Colonel Anthony (Buddy) Bianca, a veteran V-22 pilot. But the dirty little secret about an aircraft that combines the best features of an airplane and a helicopter is that it combines their worst features too. The V-22 can't glide as well as an airplane, and it can't hover as well as a helicopter. If a V-22 loses power while flying like an airplane, it should be able to glide to a rough but survivable belly-flop landing. Its huge, 19-ft.-long (5.7 m) rotors are designed to rip into shreds rather than break apart and tear into the fuselage. But all bets are off if a V-22 is flying like a helicopter, heading in or out of a landing zone, and its engines are disabled by enemy fire or mechanical malfunction.

As originally designed, the V-22 was supposed to survive a loss of engine power when flying like a helicopter by autorotating toward the ground, just as maple seeds do in the fall. Autorotation, which turns a normally soft touchdown into an very hard emergency landing, is at least survivable. It became clear, however, that the design of the Osprey, adjusted many times over, simply could not accommodate the maneuver. The Pentagon slowly conceded the point. "The lack of proven autorotative capability is cause for concern in tilt-rotor aircraft," a 1999 report warned. Two years later, a second study cautioned that the V-22's "probability of a successful autorotational landing ... is very low." Unable to rewrite the laws of physics, the Pentagon determined that the ability to perform the safety procedure was no longer a necessary requirement and crossed it off the V-22's must-have list. "An autorotation to a safe landing is no longer a formal requirement," a 2002 Pentagon report said. "The deletion of safe autorotation landing as a ... requirement recognizes the hybrid nature of the tilt-rotor."

Indeed it does, but that doesn't make the aircraft any safer. The plane's backers said that the chance of a dual-engine failure was so rare that it shouldn't be of concern. Yet the flight manual lists a variety of things that can cause both engines to fail, including "contaminated fuel ... software malfunctions or battle damage." The lone attempted V-22 autorotation "failed miserably," according to an internal 2003 report, obtained by TIME, written by the Institute for Defense Analyses, an in-house Pentagon think tank. "The test data indicate that the aircraft would have impacted the ground at a ... fatal rate of descent."

That prospect doesn't concern some V-22 pilots, who believe they'll have the altitude and time to convert the aircraft into its airplane mode and hunt for a landing strip if they lose power. "We can turn it into a plane and glide it down, just like a C-130," Captain Justin (Moon) McKinney, a V-22 pilot, said from his North Carolina base as he got ready to head to Iraq. "I have absolutely no safety concerns with this aircraft, flying it here or in Iraq."

Helicopter expert Rex Rivolo, who called the decision to deploy the V-22 without proven autorotation capability "unconscionable" in that confidential 2003 Pentagon study, declined to be interviewed. But in his report, Rivolo noted that up to 90% of the helicopters lost in the Vietnam War were in their final approach to landing when they were hit by enemy ground fire. About half of those were able to autorotate safely to the ground, "thereby saving the crews," Rivolo wrote. "Such events in V-22 would all be fatal."

Faced with killing the program — or possibly killing those aboard the V-22 — the Marines have opted to save the plane and have largely shifted responsibility for surviving such a catastrophe from the designers to the pilots. While the engineers spent years vainly trying to solve the problem, pilots aboard a stricken V-22 will have just seconds to react. But tellingly, pilots have never practiced the maneuver outside the simulator — the flight manual forbids it — and even in simulators the results have been less than reassuring. "In simulations," the flight manual warns, "the outcome of the landings varied widely due to the extreme sensitivity to pilot technique and timing." The director of the Pentagon's testing office, in a 2005 report, put it more bluntly. If power is lost when a V-22 is flying like a helicopter below 1,600 ft. (490 m), he said, emergency landings "are not likely to be survivable."

The Pea-Shooter Problem

While the aerodynamics of autorotation may be challenging for outsiders to grasp, a second decision — sending the V-22 into combat armed with only a tiny gun, pointing backward — is something anyone can understand. The Pentagon boasts on its V-22 website that the aircraft "will be the weapon of choice for the full spectrum of combat." That's plainly false — and by a long shot. Retired General James Jones, who recently led a study into the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, is a V-22 supporter. But when he ran the Marines from 1999 to 2003, he insisted the plane be outfitted with a hefty, forward-aimed .50-cal. machine gun. "It's obviously technically feasible. We've got nose-mounted guns on [helicopter gunship] Cobras and other flying platforms, and I thought all along this one should have it too," he says.

The Marines saluted, awarding a $45 million contract in 2000 for the development of a swiveling triple-barreled .50-cal. machine gun under the V-22's nose, automatically aimed through a sight in the co-pilot's helmet. "All production aircraft will be outfitted with this defensive weapons system," the Marine colonel in charge of the program pledged in 2000. The weapon "provides the V-22 with a strong defensive firepower capability to greatly increase the aircraft's survivability in hostile actions," the Bell-Boeing team said. But the added weight (1,000 lbs., or 450 kg) and cost ($1.5 million per V-22) ultimately pushed the gun into the indefinite future.

So 10 V-22s are going to war this month, each with just a lone, small 7.62-mm machine gun mounted on its rear ramp. The gun's rounds are about the same size as a .30-06 hunting rifle's, and it is capable of firing only where the V-22 has been — not where it's going — and only when the ramp used by Marines to get on and off the aircraft is lowered. That doesn't satisfy Jones. "I just fundamentally believe than an assault aircraft that goes into hot landing zones should have a nose-mounted gun," Jones told TIME. "I go back to my roots a little bit," the Vietnam veteran says. "I just like those kinds of airplanes to have the biggest and best gun we can get, and that to me was a requirement." He doesn't think much of the V-22's current weapon: "A rear-mounted gun is better than no gun at all, but I don't know how much better."

The Marines say combat jets or helicopter gunships will shadow V-22s flying into dangerous areas. And backers say the V-22's speed will help it elude threats. It could, for example, zip into harm's way at more than 200 m.p.h. (320 km/h), convert to helicopter mode and then land within seconds. It could pause on the ground to deliver or pick up Marines and then hustle from the landing zone. Various missile-warning systems and fire-extinguishing gear bolster its survivability. If it is hit, redundant hydraulic and flight-control systems will help keep it airborne. Finally, Marines say, if the V-22 does crash, its crumpling fuselage and collapsing seats will help cushion those on board.

It's good that such protection is there. It's needed. For the V-22 continues to suffer problems unusual in an aircraft that first flew in 1989. In March 2006, for example, a just-repaired V-22 with three people aboard unexpectedly took off on its own — apparently the result of a computer glitch. After a 3?sec. flight to an altitude of 6 ft. (about 2 m), according to the V-22's flight computer, or 25 ft. (about 8 m), according to eyewitnesses, it dropped to the ground with enough force to snap off its right wing and cause more than $1 million in damage.

There's more. Critics have had long-standing concerns about the poor field of view for pilots, the cramped and hot quarters for passengers and the V-22's unusually high need for maintenance. A flawed computer chip that could have led to crashes forced a V-22 grounding in February; bad switches that could have doomed the aircraft surfaced in June. In March the Government Accountability Office warned that V-22s are rolling off the production line in Amarillo, Texas, and being accepted by the Marines "with numerous deviations and waivers," including "several potentially serious defects." An internal Marine memo warned in June that serious and persistent reliability issues could "significantly" reduce the aircraft's anticipated role in Iraq. V-22s built before 2005, the report said, are fully ready to fly only 35% of the time, while newer models, like those in Iraq, are 62% ready. But "sustained high-tempo operations in [Iraq]," the memo warns, could drive down the readiness rates for the newer V-22s.

Into Iraq

Soon enough, the marines will know if those warnings are on target. "My fervent desire is to get the V-22 into the fight as soon as we can," General James Conway, commandant of the Marines, said in March. "I think it's going to prove itself rapidly." But then he said something that stunned V-22 boosters: "I'll tell you, there is going to be a crash. That's what airplanes do over time." Conway is not alone. Ward Carroll, the top government spokesman for the V-22 program from 2002 to 2005, believes that six Ospreys, about 5% of the fleet, will crash during its first three years of operational flight. Carroll says new pilots flying at night and in bad weather will make mistakes with tragic consequences. So he's reserving judgment on the aircraft and suspects that many of those who will be climbing into the V-22 are too. "I'm still not convinced," he says — echoing comments made privately by some Marines — "that the Marine ground pounders are in love with this airplane."

A former F-14 aviator, Carroll likens the V-22 to another Marine favorite, the AV-8 Harrier jump jet. "The Harrier," he notes, "is actually a good analogy for the V-22." Like the AV-8, the V-22 is a radical aircraft crammed with compromises that may change combat forever. And like the AV-8, it may also kill a lot of Marines while doing little of note on the battlefield. Since 1971, more than a third of Harriers have crashed, killing 45 Marines in 143 accidents.

But there's a critical difference between the two warplanes. Each Harrier carries a single pilot, nestled into an ejection seat with a parachute. But after all the debate about tilt-rotor technology — after all the vested interests have argued their case and all its boosters and critics have had their say — this much we know: within days, a V-22 will begin carrying up to 26 Marines into combat in Iraq, with no ejection seats — and no parachutes.

• Mark Thompson
• After an investment of $20 billion, the V-22 Osprey arrives in Iraq to make its combat debut — lacking both firepower and the ability to land safely. A TIME investigation