In the request for briefing they wrote:
Sikorsky’s bid for FLRAA “was significantly superior in terms of cost, but that due to a subjective unsatisfactory evaluation on a single criteria,
How could they possibly know any of this as they haven’t been briefed? Inspection of the two aircraft shows the simpler V-280 should, if anything, be lower cost than the more complex SB1. In one area that drives costs, the 280 has only 6 rotor blades while the SB-1 has 16 blades with similar cost per unit. If SB actually had a lower bid it was probably corrected by the govt based upon both Sik and Boeing’s cost overruns on current programs.
While the SB proposal may have been unsatisfactory in only one area (which is highly doubtful), it is clearly widely inferior by large margins, relative to the 280, in almost all categories including:
Maturity of design
Speed
Range
Comfort
Size (the 280 is close to the UH-60 while the SB1 is comparable to a Chinook)
In the end, the FLRAA has to be the one that has the longest range at a high enough speed to exploit that range to meet the anticipated primary missiion. The Army has determined that is the Bell offering.