As often happens with such things, Sikorsky has lodged a formal protest of the Army’s decision to go with competitor Bell’s V-280 Valor as its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). Sikorsky, which is owned by Lockheed Martin, teamed with Boeing to offer the DefiantX. It is protesting the $232 million contract that will cover the final design work and program development. It includes no aircraft. The protest automatically puts a stop to all work covered by the contract for at least the next 100 days. After the design is complete, the Army will pay a total of $8.2 billion to get the aircraft into production. Entry to service is expected in the mid-2030s.
The two aircraft are radically different. The winning Valor, which will take over from the venerable Sikorsky-built UH-60 Black Hawk, is a tiltrotor while the Defiant has counterrotating rotors with a pusher prop. Sikorsky said in a statement the Army got the contract award wrong. “The data and discussions lead us to believe the proposals were not consistently evaluated to deliver the best value in the interest of the Army, our soldiers, and American taxpayers,” the statement said.
