I personally never accepted that a lowly Insecticon (or clone) would be turned into one of Galvatron's main henchmen... especially how intelligent they were in the UK comics... and always assumed it was one of the
hundreds of animation errors in the 1986 movie, as it made more sense to me to have Thundercracker and Skywarp be the two main henchmen, and the Insecticons (clones) be the Sweeps and Armada clones. (not that the "armada of Cyclonus clones" ever reappeared after the attack on Autobot city, so were probably in the original script to make up a more significant fighting force of Decepticons when they returned to Autobot City - a bit like the seeker clones and Reflector clones in the first few episodes of the original cartoon just to make up numbers)
Before the storyboards surfaced in 2005 (Wally Burr was selling them at BotCon that year), it was one of those fan debates that had no end, between those who saw Bombshell on screen become Cyclonus, and those who believe it was just another animation error and it was meant to be Skywarp who was also black and purple.
I'd like to see the original script, to see if Ron Friedman actually had anyone specific become Scourge and Cyclonus, as storyboard scripting (the action described below each frame of the storyboard), doesn't say any specific Decepticon, but does name who each new Decepticon is called. I think the storyboard artist working off Ron's script, probably just picked random characters that were thrown out in the previous scene, not knowing if any were more significant than others. After all, this was originally written during the first year of Transformers, and the writer didn't really need to feature many of them in a significant way, as they would be off toy shelves by the time this movie would be out)
The IDW comic version of the 1986 movie (printed in 2006) did a lot of fixing of errors and inconsistencies, but stayed true to the animated movie by having Bombshell become Cyclonus. Then again...
the actual animated scene with Cyclonus and his Armada being created at the same time doesn't necessarily mean that Cyclonus is the one at the front.