🚁 My Internship at Bell 🚁

To begin, what is the MV-75 and what role does it intend to fill in the US Armies armada?

The MV-75 is the winner of the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program (FLRAA) - this program was intended to design a replacement to the time-tested UH-60 Black Hawk. The Black Hawk was fundamentally a utility vehicle and presented many fundamentally useful features to a military - the most obvious among them clearly being vertical lift in an easily configurable package. As my coworkers said during my time at Bell, helicopters are the Jeep's of the sky. That means that they can flex to many roles and accomplish them well! However with that being said there are some limitations. The most obvious limitation being the range of the aircraft is middling at best. This is the limitation that bells solution - the tilt-rotor sought to overcome. In other words the MV-75 seeks to provide the same level of utility coverage, while also repairing the most limiting factor of helicopters... range. 

It was obviously a success! The United States Army dropped an absolutely jaw dropping 70 billion dollars on the program - making it the largest acquisition in Army history.

What are some experiences that I got to enjoy and learn from?

As an intern - it became clear very early on that Bell (and by extension: Textron) were companies that were earnest in wanting to invest in new talent. They provided dozens of resources and opportunities to learn from and grow as emerging professionals in the space. 

Among some of these experiences were:

• Industry grade lessons on 3DX, Catia and Project Life Cycle Management, where we got to design varying parts in accordance with company modelling practices and with respect to company intellectual property. 

• State of the art lectures on rotorcraft and tiltrotor technologies, covering underlying physical principles and design decisions across various parts.

• Analyzing, Sanitizing, and Implementing various engineering datasets into production databases.

• Designing Scripts and Algorithms to automate 3DX configuration management improving efficiency for the task by 99.54%

• Interfaced with United States Government and Department of Defense on a weekly basis through a variety of meetings.

• Toured 3+ State of the art production facilities gaining firsthand exposure to various production and machining technologies.

• Regularly network with industry subject matter experts and technical competency leads for firsthand feedback on various ideas and theories.

Without a doubt, this was an incredible internship - even without these incredible experiences that I had, the exposure to industry even from the desk was tangible and taught me a great amount about how the industry is growing and where it seems to be the most prevalent. Thank you again Bell Flight for giving me the chance to experience this opportunity and I look forward to the opportunities to come!!