Prove the tiltrotor before making it fleet air-defense command

How should a navy develop a V-22-based airborne-early-warning aircraft?

First mature the tiltrotor in cheaper utility roles, then design the AEW variant using operational evidence because fleet air defense cannot depend on an unproven configuration.

Early variants should explore lower-risk transport, gunship, or anti-submarine missions and feed real operating experience into later designs. Tiltrotors introduce transition, pitching, rotor, and control problems that simulations cannot reveal completely. Airborne early warning is too central to a task group's defensive and offensive coordination to become the first place a navy accepts those unresolved risks.