Northrop And EADS Wait On Final RFP Release
Filed under: Boeing, Congress, EADS, KC-X, KC-X Tanker News, Northrop Grumman Corp., Syndicated Industry News
The KC-X Tanker RFP is expected to be released in the next few weeks. Previously Notthrop and its partner EADS had threatened not to participate as they felt the draft RFP was biased in favor of Boeing. Now they are saying they will wait and see what is in the RFP when it is put out. It is in the best interest of the Air Force and the U.S. Government to receive multiple bids on the project.
Without competition the chance of this third attempt proceeding will be difficult. Sole sourcing the contract to either Boeing or the Northrop team will cause an outcry in Congress no matter what as both companies have their supporters. Not putting out a competitive RFP will only lead to protests and further delays in what has become a critical program to replace the aging KC-135 aircraft.
We are all going to have to wait to see what the Air Force puts out and how Northrop, EADS and Boeing respond to it.
Second TRICARE Protest Sustained For Health Net Raises Issues With Whole Process
A second of the three protests for the TRICARE management contracts awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year was sustained....BAE Systems Leads To Pentagon Complaints On Protests
At a recent press availability Ashton Carter the Defense Department's lead acquisition official stated he did not want to see "frivolous" protests...Oshkosh Recent Award Protested
A recent truck contract to Oshkosh is being protested by two of the losing companies. Does this indicate that protests will now be more common as...Interesting Column at The Space Review on Protests in Space Contracting
Filed under: Business Line, Contract Awards, Events, Military Aviation, NASA, Protest, commercial aviation, space
Taylor Dinerman has written an interesting column on the recent protest of the commercial cargo contracts given to SpaceX and Orbital by PlanetSpace. He is comparing it to the almost routine practice in the Defense industry of protesting large contracts you don’t win. Actually some small ones are as well. In Defense there has been a growth over the last ten years in protests as the number of companies and contracts have shrunk. NASA has avoided this mainly, in my opinion, of the few “commercial” contracts they award and that there has been enough work to go around in the past.
Read more
USAF Secretary comments on protests
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, GAO, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
Secretary Wynne of the US Air Force discusses protests in this article. The gist is that the Air Force is accepting protests as a matter of course and is working to make the selection process more transparent in an attempt to limit them. The key quote is “”We’ve got so few suppliers that I’m not going to treat them badly because they protest. It’s their right,” Wynne told an aerospace industry group.” Read more
HASC to ask GAO to investigate protests
Filed under: Congress, Contract Awards, Editorial, Federal Budget Process, GAO, Protest
As part of their work on the defense budget the HASC is going to ask the GAO to investigate whether there are too many protests. See the story here. As we have previously discussed ad nauseum there is little disincentive for a losing contractor to protest. At the best they win, and the worst they lose but it takes little time and money to cut the necessary legal documents and fax them in. With the number of large contracts declining, and their worth growing, there will continue to be protests as the various contracts awarded. It has not just been for large development and procurement contracts, there have been protests of service ones as well. The GAO dismisses most of the protests as it takes a really big screw up by the acquisition and contract people to uphold them, but the delay the programs and cost the winner and the government time and money. Since the right to protest is pretty much part of Federal contract law it will be hard to change the number without changing that, unless the Congress wants to start punishing for frivolous protests. That is not common in American legal tradition, but we will see.
Lockheed protests BAMS award
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, Lockheed Martin, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Navy, development program
As previously discussed here the US Navy awarded the Broad Aeriel Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) contract to Northrop Grumman. The two losers were Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Now according to this story Lockheed is protesting. Northrop Grumman won with a version of the Global Hawk, Lockheed had proposed a scaled up version of the Predator UAV. It was not surprising that Global Hawk won as the Navy had already tested it, but Lockheed is basing their protest on the word that the Navy found their proposal technically adequate and cheaper then the Northrop one. Read more
OSD expresses concern over protests
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, Department of Defense, EADS, Federal Budget Process, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, development program, logistics
In this story Mr. Young, the Assistant Secretary of Defense of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics expresses concern over the recent amount of protests with large systems. Part of the story is letting Boeing know not to focus on the recent lost KC-45 award, but to look to future competitions. He also generally agreed with the recent GAO report that systems are over cost and behind schedule, but that is to be expected. Read more
Good summary of the problems facing Boeing with the GAO
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch has a good article summarizing the protest process. See the story here. It stresses that the GAO will overturn only if they find that the acquiring agency did not apply their criteria correctly during the source selection process, and even if they uphold the protest, the most likely result will be a reopening of the competition. Of note, 29% of protests last year were upheld.
DoD clears way ahead for $4.6 Billion translation contract
Filed under: Contract Awards, Department of Defense, Dyncorp, L-3, Protest, logistics
Dyncorp was cleared to go ahead and begin work on a $4.6 B contract it had won to provide translation services in Iraq to the US DoD. It had been protested by one of the losers. See the story here. L3 dropped the protest after it became part of the team that Dyncorp had set up to perform the services. That is one way around the protests process. Of course it helps that this is one large service contract with plenty of work to spread around. L3 was the incumbent who lost the contract.
After debriefs protest to come
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, GAO, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
According to press reports Boeing will protest the KC-45 award to Northrop-Grumman and EADS. They are supposedly going to the General Accounting Office (GAO), which is the middle level. The lowest is the agency making the decision, here probably Air Force Material Command, and the highest is straight to Federal Court. They can still go to court if they disagree with the GAO decision. If you go to court you will most likely just get some money, not the contract. The GAO if it upholds the protest will most likely direct recompetition. See the CSAR-X for an example of that, which funnily Boeing won but Sikorsky and Augusta Westland won on protests. Northrop Grumman on the other hand put out a press release on why they won.
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