I am sure of these ratings, I slept for months with them floating before my eyes
"Doctor doctor I keep seeing purple and green spots."
"Have you seen an optician?"
"No, just purple and green spots!"
Sorry, schoolboy humour
Now back to the plot ...
When I set out to buy something like a car or PC, first I decide what I would like, then I go to the market place and see what is out there. I then modify my wish list based on what I've seen and what money I have. I then "haggle" with a selected merchant to get as much as I can for as little money as possibe. I don't believe that the aerospace business is any different.
I value your sharing your knowledge of the competition as it puts discussion in context. In my opionion though, you probably have little detailed information about the specification that exists now or the VH-71 that has come about as the result of the "haggling" phase. I take the statement below at face value
Delivery of the first aircraft was to take place by October 2009. It now appears that delivery may not come until February 2010. ... The Navy cited systems integration difficulties as the cause of the delay. “It’s just a very tough thing to integrate all those systems and get them all talking to each other,” one Navy official said. - Rotor & Wing
Therefore we cannot predict how much difficulty the Sikorsky team would have had facing the same challenges. I guess that cabin size was a real issue for this competition.