Osprey symbolizes how hard it is to cut defense

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta shoved his head into a snug aviator helmet topped with goggles one September morning and swooped into Lower Manhattan on a V-22 Osprey, a $70 million aircraft that Marines use for battlefield assaults in Afghanistan.

"How'd you like that gizmo?" Panetta said after landing at the Wall Street heliport in the Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter, flies like an airplane – and has been responsible for the deaths of 30 people in test flights.

Defense Department officials say the hybrid aircraft was the fastest way to get Panetta and his entourage to New York that day.

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