As previously announced, the United States Army (US Army) has selected the Bell V-280 Valor to build the latest generation of tiltrotor aircraft (vertical lift aircraft) which will replace the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which incidentally has been operated by the US Army in various operations. since the 1970s.
At the option of the US Army, Bell Textron, manufacturer of the Bell V-280 Valor, will receive a US$232 million contract, the first installment of a US$7.1 billion deal for the development and initial batch of replacements for the Black Hawk fleet in the Future Long-Term Program. Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA).
The decision from the US Army is clearly a major win for Bell, which could secure more than US$70 billion in contracts in the coming decades, depending on how many units the US Army and foreign militaries order.
However, according to the policy in the tender in force in the United States, the losing party, in this case Sikorsky-Boeing, can still file a protest or objection to the decision taken by the end user.
Losing companies have three days to request a briefing from the Army about their decision. After that briefing they had the option to 'protest' the Army's decision. If they do protest, the Government Accountability Office will review it and make a decision.
And as expected, Sikorsky, who is under the auspices of Lockheed Martin, has officially filed a protest against the choice of the US Army which has chosen the Bell V-280 Valor as the FLRAA.
Sikorsky is working with Boeing to offer the SB-1 Defiant X compound coaxial helicopter for the FLRAA program. However, it lost out to Bell Textron, which offered the Army's preferred V-280 advanced tiltrotor as a replacement for the Black Hawk. In the aftermath of the protest, the production phase of the Bell V-280 Valor will be temporarily halted until the problem is resolved.
Quoted from TheDrive.com, a formal Sikorsky protest was filed on December 28, 2022, and the protest automatically stops work on the FLRAA program while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) considers Sikorsky's objections to the Army election.
"Based on a thorough review of the information and feedback provided by the Army, Lockheed Martin Sikorsky, on behalf of Team Defiant, opposed the FLRAA's decision," said Paul Lemmo, Sikorsky President in a statement.
Lemmo added, “The data and discussion lead us to believe that these proposals are not consistently evaluated to provide the best value for the benefit of the Army, our servicemen, and the American taxpayer. The mission importance of the FLRAA to our Army and our nation requires the most capable, affordable and lowest risk solutions. We remain confident that the Defiant is the transformational aircraft the Army needs to complete its complex missions today and into the future."
The SB-1 Defiant design is based on dozens of hours of flight tests by the operational prototype SB-1 Defiant, which was developed in parallel with Valor during the Joint Multirole Technology Demonstration program.
The Defiant first flew in March 2019, more than a year after the Valor was first launched in December 2017. The delay was partly due to development issues which included issues with the reverse rotor system.
Boeing had difficulty upgrading the stiff rotors to lift the 30,000 pound plane and had to redesign it before the Defiant could fly. The Defiant was also grounded in 2019, so the Defiant team was able to change the aircraft's drive train system to avoid "bearing creep" that was found during the operation of the ground-based propulsion system test bed.
FLRAA was a toss-up between two very different concepts from the start. Both designs met the Army's threshold requirements for a Black Hawk replacement but the contestants were offered with two very different airframes. One is an evolutionary upgrade on the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor concept refined to a design based on the Army's unique requirements.
The other is a combination of demonstrated but still relatively new technologies under Sikorsky's X-2 banner rolled into a higher-scale configuration.
Protests awarding major defense contracts are usually unsuccessful, and Sikorsky has so far not provided many details about the formal arguments or desired outcome. Still, the repercussions for the winners and losers of this contract are enormous, so each will still be fighting for strategic importance in the future.
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