The long-anticipated decision as to which helicopter would next carry the U.S. President was always going to leave one contender reaping the spoils and the other licking its wounds. In the end, it came down to a decision to go with the Lockheed Martin US101, a helicopter largely of British and Italian design. The choice surprised many, who apparently assumed Connecticut-based Sikorsky had the inside track, if for no other reason than that the company has supplied Marine One helicopters for as long as there has been a presidential helicopter fleet.
The level of direct American involvement in the US101, the focus of much argument during the year-long competition, turned out to matter less to the U.S. Navy than expertise in integrating airframe and mission systems into a coherent package–a skill for which Lockheed Martin has recent experience on this particular airframe (in the form of the British Navy Merlin variant of the EH101).
