Boeing [BA] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Friday filed a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over the Air Force awarding the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) contract to Northrop Grumman [NOC], according to the Air Force.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in a joint statement, called the selection process “fundamentally flawed” and said the cost evaluation performed by the Air Force did not properly reward the contractors’ proposals to break the “upward-spiraling historical cost curves of defense acquisitions.” The two companies also said the Air Force did not properly value the relative or comparative risk of the competitors’ ability to perform, as required by the solicitation.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin said its team offered the best possible LRSB at a cost that “uniquely defies the prohibitively expensive trends of the nation’s past defense acquisitions.”
Northrop Grumman said in a statement it offered an approach that was inherently more affordable and based on demonstrated performance and capabilities. Company spokesman Randy Belote declined to comment further Friday.
Air Force spokesman Maj. Robert Leese said Friday in a statement that the service is confident the source selection team followed a deliberate, disciplined and impartial process to determine the best value for the warfighter and taxpayer. Leese declined to say whether the Air Force told Northrop Grumman to stop work on LRSB during the protest. GAO’s decision is due Feb. 16, 100 days from the protest filing.
The LRSB contract is estimated to be worth around $80 billion. The decision to have Northrop Grumman build LRSB effectively preserves the company’s defense aircraft manufacturing plant and spreads the Air Force’s three priority modernization programs evenly among the three largest aerospace players. Lockheed is currently building the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Boeing holds the contract for the KC-46 aerial refueling tanker. Northrop developed the B-2 stealth bomber.
The contract awarded to Northrop Grumman has two parts: a fixed-price contract with incentives for reducing cost for 21 aircraft in five lots. The average unit flyaway cost for the contract is $511 million in 2010 dollars for a total of 100 bombers, according to William LaPlante, the Air Force’s chief weapons buyer. That translates to $564 million per bomber in fiscal year 2016 dollars (Defense Daily, Oct. 27).