2025-10-22
Bell will field first MV-75 test aircraft in FY-27 as Army moves up timeline
As the Army plans to move out on an ambitious plan to field 24 Future Long Range Assault Aircraft -- the MV-75 -- in two years, prime contractor Bell Textron plans to fly its first test aircraft in fiscal year 2027.Despite the Army Transformation Initiative and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s stated intent to get away from longer term programs of record, the secretary said earlier this year that the service intends to pull the MV-75 program to the left, with the goal of fielding 24 aircraft in 24 months.Ultimately, the Army wants to field the MV-75 to a brigade within 30 months, and to a battalion in 18 months, Ryan Ehinger, Bell’s senior vice president and program director for the MV-75, told Inside Defense last week on the showroom floor of the Association of the United States Army conference.About five months ago, Bell got the call from the Army to accelerate the program. The company gave a few options for accomplishing the task, including accelerating production, increasing the ramp rate and increasing the speed of deliveries of initial test aircraft, Ehinger said.The MV-75 is now more than “90% engineering released,” meaning that 90% of the hardware design work is done.“In terms of getting a test aircraft designed and built, getting that engineering released is the first step,” Ehinger said.The Army has told Bell it has enough confidence in the design of the MV-75 “ahead of multiple years of test activity,” according to Ehinger. After it builds the test aircraft, he said, the company plans to build its production aircraft “in parallel with our test activity.”“What gives me confidence in doing that is we've spent a significant amount of investment on the industry and the government side, on digital engineering, on model based systems engineering, on all the rigor to make sure that we are appropriately addressing the requirements that the Army has laid out, both on the hardware and the software side, and on the open systems architecture side. And the return on that investment is being able to accelerate production,” he said.Concurrent with its other work on the MV-75, Bell is working on sub assemblies for other parts such as the wings and fuselage, Ehinger added.The MV-75 will be the eventual replacement for the Black Hawk helicopter, with the Army having already started the process of divesting from older models of the legacy helicopter fleet. Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, told reporters during AUSA last week that the first two virtual prototypes will be delivered to Ft. Rucker, AL, and Redstone Arsenal, AL, with a critical design review scheduled for next spring.Meanwhile, the Army has been standing up a detachment team of about 30 people to examine the “DOTMLPF” aspect of the program -- referring to training and doctrine, according to Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, the service’s aviation future capabilities director.“As the equipment starts getting fielded, we’ve got experts that understand the doctrine piece of this, the training requirements, and then really the most important part, how the aircraft is going to perform from a sustainment aspect, from a flying aspect,” Baker said.The ramp rate on production for the MV-75 likely won’t occur until the 2030s, officials said during AUSA. No decision has been made yet on whether the Army will pursue an eleventh multiyear procurement contract for the Black Hawk, when the current one expires in FY-26. But Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the commanding general of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence, said Black Hawks will still be operational when the service begins to “layer in” the newer aircraft into formations.“We’re all going to be off this earth and the Black Hawk’s still going to be flying,” Gill said.