By Geoff Fein
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) Friday denied Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] protest of a $1.6 billion Navy contract award to Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system (UAS).
The GAO ruling will enable the Navy to resume execution of the BAMS program.
“The BAMS UAS team is now at work to fulfill the maritime warfighters’ requirements for continuous battle-space awareness. We are in the process of addressing program impacts as a result of the protest to ensure the BAMS UAS is delivered as expeditiously as possible to the Fleet,” said Capt. Bob Dishman, program manager of NAVAIR’s Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program (PMA-262), which oversees the BAMS UAS efforts.
Lockheed Martin believed its modified General Atomics‘ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) Predator B offered as good a platform as Northrop Grumman’s maranized Global Hawk but at a lower cost. The company was hoping for a more favorable decision from the GAO.
“Lockheed Martin is disappointed in the outcome of the Government Accountability Office’s recommendation to support the original Broad Area Maritime Surveillance decision. We look forward to further reviewing the documents to better understand the evaluation,” the company said Monday.
“Lockheed Martin protests contract awards infrequently and is committed to proposing and delivering best value solutions for our customers’ mission requirements. We look forward to working with the U.S. Navy on future programs and opportunities,” the company added.
Because the GAO’s decision contained proprietary information, details of the ruling are protected from public release. However, a redacted version should be available in the next two weeks, a GAO spokeswoman said.
The GAO decision showed that the Navy followed the Federal Acquisition Regulations, Dishman said.
“The decision underscores that the source selection competition for the system development and demonstration contract followed a rigorous process that adhered to stringent Federal Acquisition Regulation and Naval Air System Command (NAVAIR) processes and documentation requirements. It confirms that we have identified Northrop’s RQ-4N Global Hawk as the best-value platform for the BAMS UAS,” he added.
Northrop Grumman beat out Lockheed Martin and Boeing [BA] for the design, fabrication, and delivery of two unmanned aircraft with mission payloads and communications suites; one Forward Operating Base Mission Control System; one Systems Integration Laboratory; and one Main Operating Base Mission Control System (Defense Daily, April 23).
Boeing did not protest the contract award.
Lockheed Martin filed its protest with the GAO on May 5. At the time, the company said “…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.”
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 will 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 will 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 GA-ASI 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.
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 each (in FY ’07 dollars).