The U.S. Army has conducted a thorough assessment of supply chain risks to build the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the MV-75, and is aiming to deliver the prototype aircraft in fiscal 2027, the program executive officer for Army aviation, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, told Defense News in a recent interview.
Following calls from Army senior leaders to dramatically accelerate the MV-75’s fielding, plans conveyed earlier this year to hit production of the advanced tiltrotor by FY28 still stand, according to Army aviation leadership in the same interview.
Textron’s Bell won the contract to build the aircraft in late 2022, beating out a Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky and Boeing team.
“I think that is fundamental to any of these accelerated efforts that the supply chain has to be energized. They have to be all leaning forward together,” Phillips said. “We went down and we visited a lot of suppliers to make sure they could accelerate. Everybody from the landing gear suppliers to the … engine suppliers, Bell’s internal supply chain for their drive system, we want to make sure that all that could accelerate as well.”
While the supply chain is looking ready to accelerate, it still poses the “highest risk” to moving quickly, Phillips emphasized.
While speeding up any major procurement program contains substantial risk, Army aviation leaders and Bell say the program is unique in the sense that significant risk was driven down through digital design, engineering and a technology demonstration effort, where it flew the V-280 Valor tiltrotor for over 200 hours.
“We intend to deliver the prototype aircraft in FY27, earlier is better, and then in FY28, going into production,” Phillips said. “We genuinely think we can get there. The goals are realistic; they don’t come without some risk.”
The Army plans to complete the critical design review phase in 2026 and will then begin ramping up hardware production, Phillips said. Even so, Bell has a long list of parts that are already in production, he said.
And Bell has also decided to build the aircraft’s fuselage in-house at its facilities in Wichita, Kansas.
The training base is also beginning to take shape. The U.S. Marine Corps delivered an MV-22 tiltrotor to Fort Rucker, Alabama, where the Army trains its aviators, “a couple of months ago,” Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army Aviation Center of Excellence commander, told Defense News.
And Army aviators are both learning on the Marines’ simulator and flying the aircraft with them, he added.
The acceleration effort has not resulted in any change to the requirements the Army has already defined for its future aircraft.
“We’re not trading any requirements to go faster,” Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, who is in charge of the service’s future vertical lift efforts, said. “The right to repair, [modular open system architecture], speed, range, sustainability aspects — all of that remains the same,” he said.
“We have not come off of any of those requirements and Bell has not come back at all asking to come off those requirements,” Baker said.
The Army is also not making compromises to safety, Phillips emphasized.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.