Fort Worth-based Bell Textron was given permission to move ahead with the manufacture of the next generation of the U.S. Army’s assault helicopter.
Bell Textron beat out competition in the Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter, which has been in use the 1970s. The Army’s selection of Bell’s tilt-rotor V-280 Valor helicopter came with a hefty contract worth about $7.1 billion.
Following the announcement of the selection of the V-280, Boeing and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, collaborators for the proposed Defiant X helicopter, filed a protest of the selection of Bell’s chopper based on several factors, including engineering design and cost issues.
The U.S. Government Accountability office on Thursday rejected the protest from Boeing and Sikorsky.
In denying the protest, GAO concluded that the Army reasonably evaluated Sikorsky’s proposal as technically unacceptable because Sikorsky failed to provide the level of architectural detail required by the request for proposal, Kenneth E. Patton, the GAO’s managing association general counsel for procurement law, said in a statement.
The government agency also denied Sikorsky’s allegations against the acceptability of Bell’s proposal and dismissed Sikorsky’s additional arguments, claiming that that Sikorsky was no longer an interested party to further challenge the procurement.
Sikorsky and Boeing indicated they are considering further action.
“We remain confident the Lockheed Martin Sikorsky and Boeing team submitted the most capable, affordable and lowest-risk Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft solution,” Sikorsky and Boeing responded in a statement. “We will review the GAO’s decision and determine our next steps.”