The Bell-Boeing programme office has announced that the US Department of Defense has awarded a $10.4 billion, five year multi-year procurement (MYP) contract to deliver 167 V-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft.

The five-year contract includes 26 CV-22 aircraft for the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and 141 MV-22 aircraft for the US Marine Corps. The contract includes an option for additional aircraft.

Bell-Boeing is a strategic alliance between Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company and The Boeing Company.

The Osprey is the world's first production tilt rotor aircraft, designed from the ground up to meet the needs of all four US armed services.

The Bell-Boeing program office recently celebrated the production of the 100th V-22.

"The Multi-Year Procurement sets a strong positive course for the V-22 Osprey program,'' said Gene Cunningham, vice president of the Bell Boeing Program Office in Amarillo. "The Government and industry teams have worked very hard to reach this agreement. The MYP contract allows the industry team to stabilize our production plans, creates savings for the taxpayer, and increases the number of aircraft being produced for the war-fighter.''

The fuselage for the V-22 is built by Boeing Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia. Bell builds components for the aircraft in Fort Worth, Texas, and completes final assembly at its Military Aircraft Assembly Center in Amarillo.

The V-22 is a tilt-rotor aircraft with prop-rotors (propeller rotors) and engines installed in nacelles at the tips of both wings. With the nacelles tilted in the vertical position, the V-22 can take-off, hover and land like a helicopter and when tilted down into the horizontal or forward position, it can fly at more than 300 mph with the long range of a fixed-wing turboprop airplane.

Currently 12 Marine Corps MV-22 aircraft are conducting combat operations from Al Asad Air Base, Iraq.

Bell Helicopter is a unit of Textron Inc, a $13.2 billion multi-industry company operating in 34 countries with approximately 44,000 employees.