AW609

AugustaWestland AW-609 Tiltrotor Aircraft
I wonder where this photo was taken.

This design is for the civilian aviation market, so maybe the Osprey isn't just a nightmare dreamed up by the USA's Department of Defense, maybe such a configuration really is practical, for some value of 'practical'. They have a couple of prototypes flying, or they did. One crashed in Italy a couple of days ago, 'caught fire' witnesses say. Complicated aircraft can be finicky, especially prototypes. We lost a couple of Ospreys early on. Even so, given as Italy is in Europe, a known hotbed of troublemakers, I wonder if they canvassed the area looking for terrorists previously armed with a Stinger.

Via Comrade Misfit.