This is only one of many examples where congress has pretended they were engineers, and dictated either designs or whole programs, with the sole purpose of bringing jobs home and buying votes.
DoD would have bagged this program a long time ago!
My other favorite example is the Space Shuttle, with it's recycled parts. Congress liked the idea of recycling because of it's PR value. Aerospace engineers would have never recommended that approach as being most efficient and cost effective.
DoD tried to bag it from April of 1989 - January of 1993 and failed, miserably. You might want to publicly admit that Cheney, while SecDef, was threatened with criminal prosecution for illegally diverting funds appropriated for the V-22 to other projects but doing so wouldn't fit your agenda.