Building Manufacturing Plants In Dallas-Fort Worth Area

Bell Textron is moving ahead at full throttle to deliver a prototype of the U.S. Army’s Bell MV-75 attack aircraft meant to replace the Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter.

The Army chose Bell in 2022 to develop its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program with a contract that in the short term would be worth $1.3 billion and as much as $70 billion over a period of decades.

Bell has invested a lot of money in new buildings in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas to support the manufacturing of the aircraft. They include a Drive Systems Test Lab worth $20 million in Grand Prairie and a Weapons Systems Integration Lab in Arlington close to its existing flight research center.

Most recently it built a $632 million plant in Alliance to manufacture transmissions and rotor blades for the new helicopter. With 8,000 people already employed in the area, that number would grow significantly under the huge Army contract.

Because Army leaders expressed a desire to have a prototype by 2028 instead of 2030, Bell is prepping to deliver it even earlier. In June, the company delivered two virtual MV-75 prototypes which are advanced simulators that perform as digital twins of the real aircraft’s cockpit. And Army pilots are being trained on MV-22 Ospreys to get ready for the new tiltrotor. It is not unusual for new aircraft to be introduced through simulators.

Ryan Ehinger, Senior Vice President and FLRAA Program director for Bell said, "I would say the uniqueness is that we are so early in the process. Having this capability allows the Army to accelerate their familiarity with tiltrotor flight operations and tactics and techniques, and that's part of ... our ability to accelerate the program."

The MV-75 will be assembled at the Bell plant in Amarillo but many of the parts will be manufactured and tested in the DFW area. There are presently more than 1,000 people working on the engineering and manufacturing development elements of the aircraft. Although Ehinger did not provide a precise timeline for getting the Alliance plant running, the company is navigating the permitting and constructing phases of the new factory.

"There's going to be a lot of activity going on there as we build it up, to be able to produce parts between now and 2027," he said.

FMI:  www.bellflight.com/