Textron Warns MV-75 Tiltrotor Faces Possible Reach-Forward Loss

Rising costs could trigger a $60-110 million reach-forward loss for Bell on the first production versions of the MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft, a Textron executive warned market analysts Jan. 28.

The potential charge reflects “higher costs than originally anticipated when the program was bid in 2021,” Textron Chief Financial Officer David Rosenberg told analysts on a conference call about fourth quarter 2025 earnings.

Textron executives believe the reach-forward loss will be temporary. “The overall MV-75 program will continue to generate a positive margin after the adjustment,” Rosenberg added during his prepared remarks.

The U.S. Army accelerated the MV-75 program—formerly known as the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA)—earlier this year by 2 1/2-3 years. The schedule change advanced the award for advanced procurement of the first lot of low rate initial production to the end of this year or early 2027.

Bell won the $7.1 billion FLRAA contract more than four years ago after the Army disqualified a rival bid submitted by a Sikorsky/Boeing team in the final stages of the competition.

The program schedule originally called for a roughly two-year gap between the delivery of the last test aircraft and the first production MV-75. But the Army eliminated that buffer earlier this year to be able to field its first unit of tiltrotor aircraft by the end of the decade.

“We would have had two years of nothing. Well, that now has been filled in. So within months after aircraft number eight is delivered, you'll see aircraft number nine followed by 10, etc.,” Textron CEO Lisa Atherton told analysts on the same conference call.

Seth Seifman, an aerospace industry analyst for JP Morgan, asked Atherton, Bell’s former FLRAA program manager, what she thinks about the risks of launching production of the MV-75 during the early stages of the flight test schedule.

“When you put that [aircraft] through tests we certainly will discover some things,” Atherton replied. “But I think we have high confidence that we have wrung out a lot of the concerns that you might have seen in older generation-type development programs.”

Bell has been working on the MV-75 design for more than 15 years, Atherton said. The company completed more than 200 flight hr. on the V-280 Valor, a demonstrator partly funded by the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration program, she added. The company has approved 90% of the design drawings for the MV-75 so far, and the first parts of the flight test aircraft are now in production.

“We’re having 100% first-pass yield. What that means is the parts are coming out exactly as designed. And so the fact that we’re seeing that kind of performance out of the program gives me the confidence that what we build is what we designed,” Atherton said.