The U.S. Army formally named its next-generation assault plane the MV-75 Cheyenne II on April 15, attaching a reputation with deep roots in Plains warrior historical past and a lineage that reaches again to a Chilly Struggle helicopter program that by no means made it to the fleet.
The announcement got here in the course of the Army Aviation Affiliation of America’s annual Army Aviation Warfighting Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. Members of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes had been within the viewers for the announcement in line with the Army.
The plane, constructed by Bell Textron and beforehand generally known as the V-280 Valor, will exchange the UH-60 Black Hawk because the Army’s major assault helicopter.
A Program Three Years within the Making
The MV-75 pairs the vertical agility of a helicopter with the ahead pace and attain of a fixed-wing plane. Its rotors swivel from vertical for takeoff and touchdown to horizontal for cruise flight, a configuration the Army says will let it fly roughly twice as quick and twice so far as the present fleet.
Bell’s V-280 demonstrator first flew out of Amarillo, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2017. It cleared its 280-knot goal in January 2019 and pushed previous 300 knots in later testing. The Army chosen Bell over a competing Sikorsky-Boeing design known as the SB-1 Defiant X in December 2022, and the Authorities Accountability Workplace turned again a Sikorsky protest the next April.
The service connected the MV-75 mission designator in Could 2025. The Cheyenne II identify was formally introduced on the Aviation Warfighting Summit.
Brent G. Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and know-how, stated the plane’s efficiency envelope will enable for “full squad insertion at prolonged vary, increasing medevac attain properly past right now’s golden hour, and enabling large-scale, long-range air assault operations that may reshape the battlefield.”
The letters “MV” stand for multi-mission vertical takeoff, and the quantity 75 marks the 12 months the Continental Congress established the Army in 1775. The service says it’s the first totally new airframe introduced into Army stock for the reason that Eighties, constructed round a modular digital structure designed to take new weapons, sensors and software program with out a full redesign.
Bell has begun assembling the primary six take a look at plane at its facility in Wichita, Kansas. Rolls-Royce is testing the AE 1107F engine that can energy the platform. The one hundred and first Fight Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, would be the first unit to subject it.
A Distinctive Naming Custom
Army officers stated they evaluated greater than 500 Native American tribes earlier than touchdown on Cheyenne, persevering with a customized that goes again many years.
The custom traces to 1947, when Gen. Hamilton Howze was assigned to Army aviation after the Air Power cut up off as its personal service. Howze wished names that mirrored what helicopters might do, not what they seemed like.
He disliked the names of the 2 earliest Army helicopters, the Hoverfly and the Dragonfly. The service’s subsequent helicopter, the H-13 of “M.A.S.H.” fame, grew to become the Sioux, a nod to the Plains tribes who had fought and defeated the seventh Cavalry on the Little Bighorn.
The apply grew to become written coverage in 1969 with Army Regulation 70-28, which required plane names to be drawn from “Indian phrases and names of American Indian tribes and chiefs,” with candidate names provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The regulation additionally demanded {that a} identify “attraction to the creativeness with out sacrificing dignity,” counsel an aggressive spirit, and replicate mobility, agility, flexibility, firepower and endurance.
The rule has since been rescinded, however the customized caught. Apache, Black Hawk, Chinook, Kiowa and Lakota names all got here out of it.
The Army has at instances sought formal tribal blessing for the plane. In June 2012, Lakota elders blessed two new UH-72A Lakota helicopters belonging to the South Dakota Army Nationwide Guard in a ceremony on the Standing Rock Reservation.
On the MV-75, Col. Jeffrey Poquette, the challenge supervisor, stated in an Army launch that the service was “honored to have the Cheyenne tribes’ approval to make use of their identify.”
The Cheyenne inhabited the Nice Plains for roughly 400 years as nomadic buffalo hunters, combating as mounted warriors throughout a variety that when stretched from Montana into Texas. Right now the individuals are represented by two federally acknowledged governments, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma.
The “II” within the new plane’s identify carries its personal historical past. Lockheed’s AH-56 Cheyenne, developed within the Nineteen Sixties beneath the Superior Aerial Hearth Help System program, was an bold compound helicopter with a inflexible four-blade major rotor and a pusher propeller mounted on the tail.
Its prototype first flew on Sept. 21, 1967, at Van Nuys Airport in California. It hit 245 knots in a dive throughout testing however was stricken by rotor vibration, rising unit prices and a deadly crash in March 1969. The secretary of the Army terminated this system on Aug. 9, 1972, and the assault helicopter mission ultimately handed to the AH-64 Apache.
Why the Black Hawk Is Making Method
The Black Hawk the MV-75 will start to interchange first flew in October 1974. It was constructed for a distinct form of struggle, one fought in shorter hops between ahead working bases, towards adversaries with out subtle built-in air defenses.
The long run combat the Army now plans for appears to be like completely different. Service doctrine on operations within the Indo-Pacific refers brazenly to the “tyranny of distance” throughout the area, and Army aviation has been rehearsing what to do about it.
In November 2025, the twenty fifth Fight Aviation Brigade flew long-range maritime air assault missions throughout open ocean out of Ford Island, Hawaii, throughout a joint coaching rotation.
The brigade had spent the prior months partnering with the Marine Corps to study an expeditionary floor refueling system so its Chinooks and Black Hawks might attain targets throughout the archipelago. The MV-75 is designed in order that form of workaround just isn’t required.
The Army plans to interchange a considerable portion of its greater than 2,000 Black Hawks with the Cheyenne II over the approaching many years.
Col. Tyler Partridge, commander of the one hundred and first Fight Aviation Brigade, stated in an Army launch that the pace and vary of the brand new tiltrotor would “basically change how we conduct air assaults.”
His unit is predicted to take supply of the primary Cheyenne IIs in 2027.
