Despite all the politics and planted press coverage around the VXX
decision, has no one has noticed that the Navy chose a less-safe,
lower-performance helicopter for the Marines to carry the President of
the United States? Coalition payback aside (and oops, the Italians
just announced they're pulling out of Iraq), this is not a good thing.

Just by virtue of when the S-92 and EH101 were designed, the VH-92 was
a generation ahead of the US101 in safety and crashworthiness. A lot of
the flaw-tolerant design methods used in the VH-92 just didn't exist
when the EH101/US101 was designed. Now we're going to pay the Italians
to bring the EH101 structures up to modern standards for
crashworthiness, birdstrike protection, etc. And to get a wider cabin,
the President will spend the next 30 years riding above fuel tanks.

And oh yeah, Lockheed Martin also has to build a whole new secure
manufacturing and support setup to include foreign workers in factories
offshore.

Hopefully, if the US101 runs late and over budget, we all get another
chance at a new Marine One.