By Geoff Fein
Lockheed Martin [LMT] yesterday filed a protest of the Navy’s award of a $1.16 billion contract to Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system (UAS).
The service awarded Northrop Grumman the contract to develop the persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance UAS for maritime security on April 22. Northrop Grumman won out over Lockheed Martin and Boeing [BA].
“Lockheed Martin is committed to proposing and delivering best value solutions for our customers’ mission requirements. Lockheed Martin protests contract awards infrequently, and only when we believe that the benefits of our offerings were not fully considered during the evaluation process,” the company said Monday in a statement. “With regard to the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance competition, information provided to us during our debrief indicated that we offered a technically compliant and awardable solution at significantly lower cost, leading us to request a Government Accountability Office review.”
GAO has 100 days to issue its decision taking its deadline to Aug. 13, according to GAO.
Boeing did not return calls regarding whether it will protest.
According to a source, Boeing and Lockheed Martin officials were briefed the same day.
Northrop Grumman and the Navy had planned to hold a media briefing on BAMS this morning. However, by mid-day yesterday, the company rescheduled the event. A short time later speculation that Lockheed Martin had filed a protest also began to surface. By early afternoon, Lockheed Martin confirmed it had filed a protest with GAO.
“The Government is confident the source selection process considered all proposals fairly, equally and in full compliance with the stringent Federal Acquisition Regulations,” Navy Spokesman Lt. Cdr. John Schofield said.” The selection was based on an evaluation of the best overall value to the Government in meeting the criteria set forth in the solicitation.”
At the time of the contract award, Navy officials noted all three teams submitted good and responsive proposals. “But clearly to us, in the best value evaluation, Northrop Grumman had the best value proposal,” William Balderson, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy (research, development and acquisition) for air programs, told reporters at the BAMS contract award (Defense Daily, April 24).
All three teams were evaluated under four criteria:
- Technical approach;
- Experience…relevant experience in this kind of development of air vehicles;
- Past performance; and
- Cost…development cost, procurement cost and lifecycle cost.
“We took each proposal under thorough evaluation and assessed each proposal against the criteria and sub-criteria and the next level down criteria for those four main factors,” Balderson said April 23. “Once you’ve done that and come up with…the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, then you do an evaluation where you go to make your trade-offs and determine, based on that relative importance, what’s in the overall best value for the government.”
Northrop Grumman was to build a Navy variant of its Global Hawk UAS. The RQ-4N would be a separate effort from the Air Force UAS because of the unique maritime requirements. But the Navy Global Hawk was to be built alongside its Air Force counterpart at the company’s Moss Point, Miss., facility.
The RQ-4N incorporates a maritime radar that has full 360-degree coverage around the air vehicle, which was an objective requirement and an emphasis area for the Navy going into source selection (Defense Daily, April 24).
Additionally, the Navy Global Hawk will have an electronically scanned array and an Electro Optical Infrared (EOIR) ball turret in its nose. The RQ-4N also has electronics support measure (ESM) capability to detect incoming electronic signals from weapons systems, and the Navy is modifying the communications suite that exists on the current Air Force vehicle to leverage off of military satellite communications.
Lockheed Martin used a modified General Atomics’ Predator B, and partnered with EDO [EDO], FLIR [FLIR], Honeywell [HON], LSI [LSI] and Sierra Nevada Corp., to offer its version of a 24/7, 365-day, ISR capability.
Mariner’s wingspan is 88 feet. Lockheed Martin officials said that would help the UAS reach an altitude of 50,000 feet and a range of at least 7,100 nautical miles. The UAS will be able to stay on station for 48 hours (Defense Daily, May 8).
Mariner has a 1,350-pound internal payload with an additional 800 pounds of space for future upgrades and a 4,000-pound external payload.
Boeing led an industry team that included Honeywell [HON], Raytheon [RTN] and Rolls-Royce, offering an unmanned version of General Dynamics‘ [GD] Gulfstream G550 aircraft (Defense Daily, June 27).
BAMS will reach initial operational capability in 2015 and is planned to achieve full operational capability in 2019. The Navy plans to buy 68 air vehicles at a cost of $55 million per vehicle (in FY ’07 dollars).