Ed Rasimus wrote:

The point, of course, is that there's nothing wrong with the
technology development of the STOVL version. I'm skeptical but have
been proven wrong before. I'm not a great believer in vertical
aircraft--AV-8 has been troublesome and we probably don't want to get
into Osprey discussions.

You're not alone. Very few aviators (military or civilian) have shown
much interest in obtaining the FAA's new "Powered Lift" rating since
the V-22 seems to crash with distressing regularity.

I've got the feeling that a useful CAS platform might be easier to
develop, less costly and more maintainable with soft field capability.
The effort to get extreme short T/O and vertical recovery seems to be
so much whiz-bang. I'd like more payload and less pilot workload.

Sepecat Jaguar? Soft-field and STOL capabilities, geared for ground
attack (10,000 lbs. of ordinance) supersonic....