No disputes on the contract definition. Just describing how the development of the two aircraft plays out to the public. As is noted in the Breaking Defense article.
“Officially, what’s happening now is a
technology demonstration, not a competition to see who builds an operational aircraft. But de facto, the Valor and Defiant have become dueling prototypes for the Black Hawk replacement. Rugen wants to officially start a competition.”
Sort of like two cars at a stop light reving their engines. Not really an official race.
What Rugen is describing is pretty much what was always planned for FVL-M. His statement about, " We know a lot about that lift-offset compound already..." doesn't make a lot of sense given X2's track record (or lack thereof) so far. We know a lot about what Sikorsky has been promising, but not much at all about whether they can actually do it. Given that all the X2s were late, only flew a few hours and have yet to demonstrate much except being quick on a straight course, it would be incredibly risky to think we know enough about X2 to compete now. That extra $20 million is nice, but Bell would probably use their share to take V-280 beyond what was required for JMR-TD (Bell offered to do that in late 2018-early 2019, while Sikorsky would use the money to attempt to get up to the JMR-TD requirements. Of course the gov't money already supplied was supposed to cover that.
It's sort of like two cars at a stop light, but one of them has repeatedly run the race before, while the other one has trouble keeping the engine running and has two flat tires.