Lockheed Martin Protest Of Army Rotorcraft Award Alleges Unequal Treatment, Rampant Subjectivity (From Forbes)

Lockheed Martin, in consultation with team member Boeing, has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office alleging that the Army made multiple mistakes in awarding the development contract for its future assault aircraft to Bell Helicopter/Textron. Among other things, Lockheed, speaking for its Sikorsky unit, contends that the Army preferred from the start to select a tiltrotor design, and bent the rules to favor that outcome; applied selection criteria subjectively and unfairly; discriminated on the basis of selection criteria not stated in the solicitation; and did not apply the standards for a best-value selection correctly. I have written a commentary for Forbes summarizing the details of the protest here.