MV-75 Cheyenne

The MV-75 Cheyenne is the U.S. Army production designation for Bell's V-280 Valor tiltrotor, selected in December 2022 as the winner of the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition to replace the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. The Army revealed the MV-75 designation in May 2025: 'MV' stands for Multi-Mission Vertical takeoff and the number 75 refers to the Army's founding year of 1775. The Cheyenne name honours the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. Unlike the V-22 Osprey, whose entire engine nacelles rotate, the V-280 keeps its engines fixed horizontally and tilts only the prop-rotor gearboxes, which keeps the exhaust away from the ground and leaves the sides of the aircraft clear for troops to enter and exit. The specifications recorded here are those published for the V-280 prototype and should be read as prototype rather than production figures: a crew of four with capacity for 14 troops, a length of 50.5 ft (15.39 m), a width across the rotors of 81.79 ft (24.93 m), a height of 7 m, an empty weight of 8,200 kg and a maximum takeoff weight of 14,000 kg, recorded here in the combat weight field. Power came from two General Electric T64-GE-419 turboshafts; the production MV-75 powerplant has not been publicly finalised. Bell's design cruise speed of 280 knots gives the aircraft its V-280 designation and is recorded here as 519 km/h; press reporting of Army briefings has cited roughly 320 mph (515 km/h) cruise and a range of up to 920 miles (1,481 km), the figure recorded here. Bell states cruise speeds around twice those of conventional rotorcraft and correspondingly greater reach, allowing assault forces to launch from safer standoff positions. The aircraft is built around a modular open systems approach and an open-architecture digital backbone intended to let mission systems be swapped without redesign. Program milestones to date: first flight of the V-280 Valor on 18 December 2017; first flight by a U.S. Army test pilot in February 2018; more than 200 flight hours across 159 flights by December 2020; FLRAA selection in December 2022; Milestone B in August 2024; the MV-75 designation in May 2025; and completion of the first two production-representative wing structures in June 2026. Limited user testing is planned for 2027 and 2028 with fielding expected around 2031, so this record is carried as announced rather than active. Only one V-280 prototype was built. Bell signed a memorandum of understanding with Korea Aerospace Industries in April 2026 covering the Republic of Korea's High Speed Medium Utility Helicopter requirement.