"Textron Inc.’s Bell Helicopter unit on Monday touted its just unveiled tilt-rotor drone program for the Marine Corps, along with its V-280 Valor tilt-rotor entrant in the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator competition.
...Tobin, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and AH-64 Apache gunship pilot, said the ship-based Vigilant would weigh about 29,000 pounds, have a 37-foot fuselage and a 65-foot wingspan — about the size of the Air Force‘s medium-altitude drone MQ-9 Reaper.
The advantage of the Vigilant, based on the technology of the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, is that it eliminates the need to be land-based to provide what Bell called “lethal reach and runway independence,” Tobin said.
The V-247 would cruise at 250 knots, the same as the V-22, allowing the Vigilant to serve as an armed Osprey escort, he said."
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