An MV-22 Osprey from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 774 flies over Fort Campbell, Ky., training grounds on Jan. 23, 2026, during an air assault exercise for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Fort Campbell incorporated the tilt-rotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — The Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey touched down gently on the long, thick vegetation in a clearing on Fort Campbell’s training grounds, sending debris flying across the field as soldiers stormed out the back of the tilt-rotor aircraft.

The 101st Airborne Division soldiers raced forward and dove into the grass, turning away from the hulking airframe to protect them from the hurricane-strength winds the Osprey produces with its twin rotors in helicopter mode. It marked a first for the historic division — a long-range air assault of infantry forces with a tilt-rotor aircraft. And it marked the first step to prepare the division to receive its own tilt-rotor aircraft — the MV-75 that Bell Helicopter is building for the service — in the coming years.

“We cooked that flight,” said Army Staff Sgt. Peyton Porter, an infantry squad leader in the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team. A veteran of the Iraq War who has completed dozens of air assault operations on traditional Army UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, Porter said he was struck by the speed of the Osprey in his first time flying in a tilt-rotor aircraft.

“It was pretty smooth, especially considering how fast it was,” Porter said Friday immediately after conducting the air assault operation during a major training exercise dubbed Operation Lethal Eagle. “It was very fast. Very nice. A lot faster than any Chinook ride that I’ve been on.”

Operation Lethal Eagle is the 101st’s primary annual divisionwide home station training exercise, which brought together about 7,000 Fort Campbell soldiers to test the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team’s lethality. After the Army announced last year the 101st would be the service’s first unit to receive the MV-75 aircraft, division planners sought to include Ospreys in Lethal Eagle to help develop the Army’s doctrine for fighting with its coming tilt-rotor capability.

“We don’t want [the MV-75] to arrive here with a learning curve,” said Brig. Gen. Travis McIntosh, the 101st Airborne’s deputy commander for operations and a longtime Army aviator. “We want it to arrive as a warfighting capability ready to go in this division. So, getting the MV-22 tilt-rotor experience today allows us to inform how we will fight with the MV-75 tomorrow.”

Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team conduct an air assault operation out of an MV-22 Osprey during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 23, 2026. Fort Campbell incorporated the tiltrotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

The 101st Airborne Division has spent recent months planning for the eventual arrival of the MV-75, currently slated for 2028, but last week was the first time it got its hands on an Osprey to see firsthand the difference a tilt-rotor aircraft could make.

The MV-75, once completed, will be slightly smaller than the Osprey, but it will bring “a new world” of capability to the 101st Airborne and the Army, according to McIntosh. Leaders at Fort Campbell have begun referring to those coming capabilities as “Air Assault 2.0,” he said.

“We’ve never been able to really get large-scale and long-range together, and that’s the relevance,” the general said. “We think speed plus range equals relevance. … In this division, we only have half the equation right now, I can either give you speed or range, not both, and with the tilt-rotor capability that we will be fielding soon, we will have that relevance and bring Air Assault 2.0 into the future fight.”

Though the Osprey can serve for now as a stand-in for the MV-75, the comparison of the tilt-rotor aircraft is not apples-to-apples, said Douglas Englen, a retired legendary Army aviator who is now a military sales and strategy manager for Bell Helicopter.

He said that Bell — which worked with Boeing to build the Osprey — has taken many design and capability cues from the Osprey, but the MV-22 was purpose-built for the Marines. Bell has designed the MV-75 from scratch specifically for the Army’s needs, Englen said.

Englen describes the new helicopter as a jump to a third generation in tilt-rotor aviation. Among the key concepts of the design is an all-digital platform that can be rapidly updated and equipped with the most modern software and hardware capabilities to allow the Army to adjust practically on the fly to emerging enemy capabilities.

The MV-75 is designed to carry 14 troops and a crew of four, according to the Army. It has a cruise speed of 320 mph — much faster than the Black Hawk’s operating speed of 183 mph. And it will boast a range of up to 920 miles, which dwarfs the Black Hawk’s 367-mile top range.

Fort Campbell officials expect to begin receiving MV-75s around 2028. Since it was chosen to build the new tilt-rotor aircraft in 2022, Bell has sped efforts to produce the new airframe, moving its goal for production up about 30 months from its initial plans, Englen said. The Army wants to further speed production, Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said this month. Army officials said this week they could not immediately provide an updated time frame for MV-75 production.

Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team conduct an air assault operation out of an MV-22 Osprey during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 23, 2026. Fort Campbell incorporated the tiltrotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Army officials believe the new capability will allow the 101st Airborne to deploy its forces as far as Europe with just MV-75s, instead of needing to load troops and helicopters on planes or ships to reach the Continent.

Army Col. Ryan Bell, the commander of the 101st’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, described that coming capability as “extending our legs.”

Bell watched closely Friday as the MV-22 from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 774 at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., conducted a handful of air assault flights with his Easy Company soldiers, who had held as his reserve force for the exercise.

The colonel, an infantry officer and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, joked that he wished he would have put himself on one of the Osprey flights to experience just how much faster it was than the Black Hawks and Chinooks he has flown on for years.

But the operation was an opportunity to learn. Bell was impressed with the Osprey’s ability to rapidly load up squads of his soldiers at a location miles away from the training fight and deliver them into an engagement.

“We can move forces from much farther away, whether we’re fighting in Europe or the Pacific — from a different island, for example,” Bell said. “It lets me change the geometry of the battlefield because of those speed and legs — the distance it can cover so quickly.

“It’s going to make us much more lethal.”

But Bell also said it was critical his troops spent Lethal Eagle focusing on basic infantry tactics while they worked to incorporate all the Army’s latest technology and the tilt-rotor Ospreys. His units employed the Army’s new M7 rifles, its latest night vision goggles and the new Infantry Squad Vehicle during its Lethal Eagle fight.

“We’re infantry. It’s all about being really good at the fundamentals,” he said. “Can you shoot, move, communicate? We’re getting a ton of technology. It enables us. It doesn’t replace those core skill sets.”

It was not lost on Bell or McIntosh the significance of placing the 2-506th’s legendary Easy Company — of “Band of Brothers” fame — in the Osprey for the 101st Airborne’s first-ever tilt-rotor air assault. One of the Army’s first airborne units that jumped into combat on World War II’s D-Day, Easy Company will now help pave the way for the next revolution in Army air-based operations, McIntosh said.

The division plans to include Ospreys in all its major training events going forward until the MV-75 arrives at Fort Campbell — so long as the Marines or another of the Army’s sister services has one available, McIntosh said.

“We’ve often said we’re not an innovation division, but we are a division that has a history of innovating, and this fits right in our profile,” the general said. “This is the division that will innovate appropriately and tell our Army how to properly execute [MV-75] air assaults.”

Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team conduct an air assault operation out of an MV-22 Osprey during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 23, 2026. Fort Campbell incorporated the tiltrotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)