The AUSA fair held in the US opens with news from Bell Helicopter's V-280 Valor tiltrotor air platform. The company that competes for the technology demonstration in the Future Vertical Lift program of the US Armed Forces ran the engine of the platform for the first time which marks the beginning of tiltrotor's ground tests.

In the program, the Bell Company competes with the SB-1 Defiant platform of the Sikorsky-Boeing consortium. The V-280 Valor is moving in a structure similar to the V-22 Osprey, which had previously been in inventory, and Defiant follows a different method. Defiant takes off with the rotation of a coaxial propeller.