Oshkosh [OSK] will continue to build the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) while a lawsuit brought by Lockheed Martin [LMT] makes its way through federal court.
Federal claims court Judge Charles Lettow on Thursday ruled against Lockheed Martin’s motion that the court halt production of the vehicle until its protest is finalized. The order is sealed from public view, as are much of the proceedings in the case thus far.
Oshkosh late last year won an initial contract to build up to 17,000 of a total 55,000 or so JLTVs for the Army and Marine Corps. The entire program is valued at $6.7 billion. Lockheed Martin immediately protested the decision to the Government Accountability Office and then to the Court of Federal Claims. It also filed a motion for preliminary injunction on all JLTV work by Oshkosh while the suit was pending.
Work on the Humvee replacement vehicle was halted between the October contract award to Oshkosh and the dismissal of Lockheed Martin’s suit in December.
Oshkosh is working on producing the first seven JLTVs by a June deadline. The Army and Oshkosh argued before the court that that small amount of trucks would not sway an ultimate decision on the merits of Lockheed Martin’s case. Oshkosh said the court’s denial of Lockheed Martin’s motion validates the Army’s source selection process.
“This decision is another indication that the U.S. Army conducted a thorough, methodical procurement process, and we are confident that the original JLTV contract award to Oshkosh will be upheld,” Wilson R. Jones, Oshkosh Corporation president and chief executive officer, said Friday in a prepared statement. “The Oshkosh JLTV team, including our employees and hundreds of suppliers, is pleased to continue our work to deliver JLTVs to our nation’s Soldiers and Marines.”
Oshkosh would not comment on how many JLTVs it has produced or at what rate its line is operating, citing the ongoing court case. A company spokesperson could not comment on whether production would speed up now that the court has ruled manufacturing can continue.
Because Oshkosh based its JLTV design largely on the mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) all-terrain vehicle (M-ATV), that program can shed light on the company’s production capacity.
Oshkosh won its M-ATV contract award on an urgent-needs basis and quickly ramped up to producing a sustained 1,000 vehicles per month within six months of the contract award.
To date, Oshkosh has delivered nearly 10,000 M-ATVs to the United States and its allies, most of which were deployed in Afghanistan where explosive devices such as IEDs were a prevalent threat to our troops.
A spokesman for Lockheed Martin declined to comment on the ruling Friday.
Like the order denying its motion, Lockheed Martin has succeeded in keeping most of the proceedings in the case sealed from the public because information on vehicle performance and design are proprietary.
The three parties in Lockheed Martin’s bid protest appeared Jan. 20 before the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., to argue the merits of Lockheed Martin’s request for a preliminary injunction on Oshkosh JLTV production. That hearing was closed to the public, but the judge in the case is expected to rule any day, according to an industry source.
Lockheed Martin was partially successful in sealing the transcript of the hearing. Law requires that a transcript be available for public viewing in whole or in redacted form within 90 days.
Lockheed Martin petitioned the court to seal the document, which would have been available to the public by law after 90 days, because much of the information aired in court was proprietary. A federal judge agreed in part, allowing the first 12 pages of the transcript to be released while the remainder “shall be permanently sealed.”
“This hearing transcript contains extensive information about nascent military technology and competitively sensitive data pertinent to offers in the procurement, which would be difficult if not impossible to redact in a way that would leave meaningful excerpts available to the public,” Judge Charles Lettow wrote in his order sealing the transcript.