Protest against FLRAA contract

Scramble already predicted it in the post of 6 December 2022 on the selection of the Bell V-280 Valor in the US Army Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition: a protest against this decision by Bell's competitor Sikorsky/Boeing.

In the process of selecting a replacement for the over 2000 Black Hawk helicopters in the inventory of the US Army it was unlikely that the loosing party would easily give up. And they did not.

On 28 December 2022, Sikorsky as representative of Lockheed Martin’s candidate Sikorsky/Boeing’s Defiant X, filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over said contract.

Sikorsky believes the proposals were not consistently evaluated to deliver the best value in the interest of the Army, its soldiers and the American taxpayers. The protest aims at the final design work and program development (worth USD 232 million) and will suspend all activities on the Bell V-280 for the next three months.

The protest of Sikorsky/Boeing over the deal did not come unexpected as there are huge amounts of money at stake: initial production is estimated to be worth at least USD 8.2 billion!

Sources: AVWeb, Defensenews. Photo: Bell