Originally Posted by
JohnDixson
Re Bell UTTAS proposal: may I use an another term, and apply it to the 1972 Bell RFP response and the SA 2023 response. “ corporate egomania “ i.e., we know better than you, Army.
I like that term “corporate egomania”. If you don’t mind, I may steal it to use at a later date. That is also an excellent term of what happened while I was at McDonnell Douglas St. Louis during the ATF proposal in 1985. You will recall the ATF (resulting in the F-22) was the replacement for the F-15.
McDonnell, after reading the Air Force’s RFP reached the conclusion that a single aircraft could not meet all of the Air Force requirements. Therefore, they submitted multiple proposals for different configuration aircraft, each design to meet a portion of the requirements.
Again a case of the manufacturer, telling the customer they are stupid, so we will tell you what you actually want.
I mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating.
The Defiant team comprised Lockheed and Boeing, the two largest US defense contractors, with combined yearly earnings of over 100 billion dollars. They were beaten for the FLRAA contract by Bell Textron, with yearly earnings of less than 5 billion dollars.