A brand new tiltrotor aircraft turned on its engines and twirled its oversized rotors this week. The Bell V-280 Valor is the first new American tiltrotor since the MV-22 Osprey and a candidate to replace the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. First flight is scheduled for later this year.

The U.S. Military's Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program seeks to replace the current crop of military helicopters with new designs. Helicopters such as the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Blackhawk were introduced in the early 1980s, and in the case of the CH-47 Chinook, the1960s. The helicopters have been steadily updated over the years with new engines, new avionics and other upgrades but are unable to take advantage of breakthroughs in aviation technology.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

One such breakthrough is the tiltrotor design, which allows an aircraft to takeoff and land like a helicopter but fly like a conventional propeller-driven aircraft. The first military tiltrotor, the MV-22 Osprey , flew in 1989. The Ospreys are prized by the U.S. Marine Corps for being faster and having a much longer range than the CH-46 Sea Knights they replaced.

The FVL-Medium program seeks to replace the Blackhawk medium transport helicopter with a new aircraft that can carry a squad or more of ground troops. This is Bell Helicopter's entry, the V-280 Valor , which looks like the love child of the Blackhawk and Osprey. The aircraft takes advantage of new advances in tiltrotor technology gained over the last 28 years and could do for the Army what the Osprey did for the Marines.

Bell claims the V-280 is a major improvement over existing helicopters. The latest version of the Blackhawk, the UH-60M, has a cruise speed of approximately 151 knots. The V-280 has a projected speed of 280 knots, almost twice as fast. The UH-60M has a crew of 3 and can carry 11 troops; the V-280 will have a crew of 4 and carry 14 troops. While the UH-60M can fly a combat mission to distances up to 368 nautical miles, the V-280's range is advertised at 500 to 800 nautical miles. The UH-60M's ferry range, the distance it can fly without cargo or passengers on a one-way trip, is 1260 nautical miles; Bell says the V-280 will exceed 2,100 nautical miles.

Bell Helicopter CGI depiction of V-280 Valor.

Simply, the V-280 can carry more troops farther and get there faster than the UH-60M. And if the helo works as advertised, the Valor will represent a significant leap in capability over the Blackhawk. An armed version of the Valor completed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles and laser-guided rockets could replace the AH-64 Apache. The Navy could adopt the V-280 for utility, light attack, and anti-submarine warfare roles.

Valor's static rotor test this week apparently went off without a hitch. Bell is still cagey about some of the technology—note the location where the rotors tilt 90 degrees from "helicopter" to "aircraft" mode is blurred in the video. Unlike the Osprey, which tilts the entire engine and the rotors attached, the Valor will only tilt the rotors .

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io