CT politicians press Pentagon for Sikorsky
In 2011, a modified Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter was the aircraft of choice to infiltrate Pakistan in the dead of night, dropping off a commando team who stormed a compound to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
This past July, the military dispatched Bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri with a dronelaunched missile that analysts believe propelled blades into al-Zawahiri at point-blank range while he stood on a balcony, rather than detonating a warhead. That reduced exponentially the risk of harming others indiscriminately, while eliminating entirely the risk to U.S. soldiers and pilots.
In both cases, generals got it right with the best technologies available at the time. But Sikorsky and Connecticut leaders are now second-guessing the U.S. Army, asserting planners got it wrong in bypassing Sikorsky’s proposed Black Hawk replacement for a competing aircraft from Texas-based aircraft manufacturer Bell. Some 8,500 people work for Sikorsky in Connecticut, with the company not having stated how many jobs are directly pegged to Black Hawk production.
An Army spokesperson said the branch does not plan to release documents detailing its choice of the Bell V-280 Valor over the Defiant-X designed by Sikorsky and Boeing, in order to protect proprietary information. The Pentagon board making the decision spanned experts from military requirements, engineering, testing, program management, logistics and contracting, according to Dave Hylton, a public affairs liaison in the U.S. Army Program Executive Office overseeing aviation.
Pending any formal challenge, the V-280 Valor will become the next Army workhorse as the Black Hawk is put out to pasture in the decades to come.
“There’s a lot at stake for our servicemembers and the American taxpayer,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd, in a written reaction to the Bell award forwarded to CTInsider on Tuesday. “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee I’ve closely overseen major contract decisions like this over the years — some that have been overturned on closer scrutiny.”
There is ample precedent for the Department of Defense reversing decisions on military readiness and equipment after external pressure, including in Connecticut. In 2005 after intense lobbying by politicians, a federal commission rejected a DOD plan to close the Naval Submarine Base New London, which today has roughly 9,500 personnel in its military and civilian employment base in Groton.
Two years later, Sikorsky succeeded in protesting a contract awarded to Boeing to build a fleet of rescue helicopters for the U.S. Air Force. Sikorsky is now building those helicopters in Stratford and Bridgeport.
But in 2018, Sikorsky fell short on a protest for a separate contract for more than 80 generalpurpose helicopters with the Air Force valued at $2.4 billion, with its HH-60U Ghost Hawk model beaten out by a utility helicopter from Boeing and Leonardo.
Government contractors have two formal lines of attack to seek a reversal of awards to rival bidders: the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears cases involving monetary claims against the federal government; or the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress to sniff out wasteful spending by agencies.
In its annual tally of bid protests, GAO logged nearly 1,600 disputes in the 2022 fiscal year ending in October, calculating a savings of $55 billion for taxpayers as a result of those decisions. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd, was on the short list of members of Congress getting a copy of the report in DeLauro’s role as chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, with Sikorsky’s headquarters plant in her district which is centered on New Haven.
GAO concurred with plaintiffs in 455 protests in the past year, in some instances forcing government agencies to cancel contract awards and reopen bidding, in others providing other forms of compensation to the losing bidder.
Bell parent Textron and Sikorsky parent Lockheed Martin have plenty of experience in the process as major military contractors. Textron fell short in a protest decided only in August, after quibbling with a contract award to a rival of a shipyard that Textron owns, which had bid to build a fleet of drone vessels for the Navy to perform minesweeping operations.
And six years ago, GAO brushed aside arguments by Boeing and Lockheed Martin that the U.S. Air Force erred in awarding the contract for a new stealth bomber to Northrop Grumman. The B-21 was unveiled last week at a Northrop Grumman facility in California, with its engines designed by East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney.
While GAO decisions are nonbinding, federal agencies typically accommodate recommendations. Only last February, however, the office reported to Congress that the U.S. Navy elected to keep in place an electronic anti-jamming system award to L3 Communications, despite a GAO ruling backing Northrop Grumman’s contention that L3’s system fell short on a key capability the Navy had asked for (the Navy defended the selection on grounds GAO based the decision on misinterpreted language in the document). It was the first time in six years an agency had not toed the line on a GAO ruling.
Decisions by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims carry the full heft of the federal judiciary, however, with agencies having no choice but to comply or open a docket in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled on roughly 250 contractual disputes in the 2022 fiscal year, without stating how many of those cases were triggered by disputes with the bidding process for new contracts.
The Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft contract won by Bell represents the backbone for the U.S. Army and possibly other services in transporting troops and equipment. FLRAA is the first major award as part of the larger Future Vertical Lift initiative by the Pentagon, which aims for a common aircraft across branches as represented by the Black Hawk and variants like the Navy’s Seahawk, the Air Force’s Pave Hawk and Jolly Green II, and the Coast Guard’s Jayhawk.
But the Pentagon deviated from the vision of a common aircraft with the FLRAA award, opting for a tilt-rotor aircraft that like the Bell V-22 Osprey takes off like a helicopter before swiveling its rotors vertically to fly like a conventional airplane.
No tilt-rotor prototype is in the running for the next major bid solicitation — the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft for scouting missions in hostile territory, with Bell putting forward a traditional helicopter design in its Invictus prototype, and Sikorsky at the table with the Raider-X version of the Defiant-X, both helicopters using stacked rotor sets for improved aerial control.
The U.S. Marine Corps had already chosen the conventional Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion helicopter as its next cargo workhorse, with Sikorsky now ramping up King Stallion production in Stratford. The Air Force’s new Sikorsky Jolly Green II is also a conventional helicopter, with the branch scaling back its planned fleet in the past year to about 75 aircraft from initial projections of more than 110.
Government contractors have two formal lines of attack to seek a reversal of awards to rival bidders: the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears cases involving monetary claims against the federal government; or the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress to sniff out wasteful spending by agencies.