The MV-22 is when the USMC's budget woes began...

You want the canary in the coal mine of when the USMC's budget problems began?  If you do then I point you to the cost issue with the MV-22.  Check this blurb out from Fool.com....

Consider, too, that while the V-22 Osprey outclasses the helicopters it is replacing in both range and speed, it also costs more than twice as much. According to BGA AeroWeb, each V-22 Textron sells brings in $69.2 million in revenue. That's more than twice the price of a big Boeing Chinook, let alone a smaller CH-46 Sea Knight (no longer being built, or priced). It's twice the cost of Sikorsky's MH-60R Seahawk -- the other helo taking over duties from the Sea Knight.
Yet price seems to be no object. The Marines still can't get enough V-22 Ospreys.

The MV-22 is obscenely expensive...and they're not finished buying them!  If you want to know why HQMC is pushing the current meme that the MV-22 is an aeronautical GOD then look no further than the budget.

The fight I predicted so long ago has finally arrived.

Its the Ground Combat Element versus the Aviation Mafia.  This is an internal battle that the USMC needs to get done and done quickly (hopefully with many of these aviation programs curtailed or canceled).  Ya know the deal about a house divided....but more important is this....  when historians take a look back at how the budget trainwreck almost killed the Corps the 900 pound twins in the corner will be the F-35 and MV-22.