Not being an expert on flying machine, I recall the Osprey having quite a bit of problems, at least initially. They’re thinking another tilt rotor won’t?
Hopefully engineers can learn from others mistakes and improve upon them.
As a mechanical design engineer myself…
It did have problems, but in service its been absolutely excellent.
LOL 
OK, OK, I understand clearly now, maybe.
It sounds like they are pretty sure they made the right choice.
I am still sad that this one wasn’t selected
Pretty cool demo flight.
I believe a major difference is that while this is also a tiltrotor it is not a tiltengine.
The engines in the 280 are fixed and only the props move while on the 22 the entire engine and rotor tilt together. Supposedly this eases maintenance and increases reliability.
Only time will tell for certain, of course.
I’ve been doing a bit of a deep dive on the whole tilt rotor thing since I got the MSFS V-22.
The short version is that the services want the speed and the range that airplane mode provides. As one person put it “if we could figure out how to make a C-130 do vertical take offs and landings…” The V-22 spends, per the pilot interviews I listened to and watched, about 80% of its time in airplane mode. The majority of the powered lift time is for training. Operationally it’s closer to 90-95% airplane mode. That capability has radically reshaped operations and planning in a positive way.
I’ll be curious if the S-97 gets any traction as an attack helo, as the Army wasn’t interested in having a “do it all” solution necessarily.
This is probably about as true for a typical troop-carrying UH-60 mission, if you separated the flight into its “helicopter phases” and “cruise phases” (say, those operations above 60 knots.) The VH-22 does exactly what it was designed to do: take people and stuff from anywhere the general wants to anywhere the general wants, faster than any helicopter so long as the two places are separated by some distance. But it is very expensive, as you all have said. I am glad they settled with the Bell. It’s faster and it looks cooler.