GAO Denies Protest of Army Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft Contract Award

The Government Accountability Office has dismissed a protest filed by Lockheed Martin’s (NYSE: LMT) Sikorsky subsidiary over the U.S. Army’s award of the potential $7.1 billion Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft development contract to Textron’s (NYSE: TXT) Bell subsidiary.

“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 RFP,” Kenneth Patton, managing associate general counsel for procurement law at GAO, wrote in a statement released Thursday.

In early December, Bell Textron won the contract to build its V-280 Valor tiltrotor for the FLRAA program, which will replace the military branch’s UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with the goal of deploying the first aircraft by fiscal year 2030.

Three weeks later, Sikorsky filed a protest asking GAO to review the Army’s contract award decision on the FLRAA program.