The Navy anticipates awarding a new version of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract for the Next Generation Jammer-Low Band(NGJ-LB), according to a Defense Department reprogramming request for fiscal year 2023.
A June 30 $4 billion omnibus reprogramming request by the DoD comptroller asked to reduce $51 million in the Next Generation Jammer Increment II program, shifting funds from $135 million to $84 million.
The department said these funds are available due to protests against the EMD contract, so it said new contract negotiations are currently ongoing, with plans to award the new version in September. Therefore, “the proposed reduction is not intended to reduce the total resources available over the life of the program, but to re-phase the funding to the appropriate fiscal year for execution.”
The NGJ is meant to replace the older ALQ-99 system on EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft by splitting into three award increments: low, mid and high bands.
DoD said more funding to support the program will be addressed in a future budget request submission to Congress.
The NGJ-LB award process has had significant protest and litigation delaying the program moving forward (Defense Daily, April 7, 2022).
The Navy first awarded the NGJ-LB to Northrop Grumman [NOC] and L-3 Technologies, now part of L3Harris Technologies [LHX], in 2018, followed by a downselect to L3Harris in December 2020.
However, Northrop Grumman filed bid protests with the GAO in February 2021 alleging conflicts of interest. GAO said since the Navy was taking action to investigate the allegations it dismissed the protests.
The Navy in April 2021 re-affirmed its award to L3Harris after concluding a re-examination of the contract. Then Northrop Grumman lodged protests on other grounds and in August 2021 GAO found the Navy’s evaluation was unreasonable as a Navy employee was negotiating employment at L3Harris while helping to write the NGJ-LB Capability Block-1 specification, creating the appearance of a conflict of interest.
GAO recommended the Navy revise its proposals and make a new source selection decision, but it allowed the service to still work with L3Harris on the low band work given a provision of the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 (CICA) that allows agencies to override an automatic work halt while a bid protest is ongoing.
The Navy decided to stick with L3Harris for NGJ-LB so, in December 2021, Northrop Grumman filed a complaint in the Court of Federal Claims, seeking a permanent injunction to stop the Navy from executing the program and bar L3Harris from bidding on any recompete.
Ultimately, by June 2022, the Navy and the two competitors agreed to a settlement that reopened the NGJ-LB competition.