By Ann Roosevelt

Northrop Grumman [NOC] Nov. 7 announced it filed a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting a review of the evaluation conducted by the Army/Marine Corps Source Selection Authority (SSA) to identify development teams for the technical demonstration (TD) phase of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program.

In late October, the government tapped: General Tactical Vehicles (GTV), comprised of General Dynamics [GD] and AM General; a Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE Systems team; and a BAE-Navistar International Corp. [NAVZ] to take the next step in the potential $40 billion development of the Army-Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) (Defense Daily, Oct. 30).

The Army was unable to respond by Defense Daily‘s deadline.

After careful examination of the data presented at the Nov. 5 debriefing, it is apparent that inconsistencies in the bid and evaluation process unfairly placed the Northrop Grumman team at a competitive disadvantage, the company said in a statement. “Northrop Grumman requests that the GAO examine the process, which it believes is marred by unstated requirement changes and arbitrary maturity ratings.”

Northrop Grumman offered the best solution for a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, clearly meeting the battlefield needs of our nation’s warfighters, the company said. “The team developed the most innovative design and at a cost significantly below other alternatives, factors we believe were not given full consideration. Design maturity is clearly a critical element, but innovation does not mean the lack of design maturity. Northrop Grumman’s innovative approach is to give our warfighters the best solution while offering American taxpayers the best value at lowest cost.”

While the warfighter need is immediate for the new vehicle, Northrop Grumman said they deserve “more than last year’s model, hastily retrofitted for rapid deployment.” Instead, the company said, in the same development period they can have “the protection, maneuverability, and security of a combat vehicle designed from the start to meet 21st century threats.”

Northrop Grumman and its partner Oshkosh Corp. [OSK] request GAO to examine several aspects of this competition, including:

The company said the SSA misapplied the stated evaluation criteria, elevating maturity level subfactors to a super factor status. Additionally, the evaluation also reflected an unannounced agency decision to transform the solicitation from a TD phase to a defacto System Design and Development (SDD) effort.

Also, the SSA lacked the following:

relied unreasonably on company self-evaluations of design maturity and failed to conduct an adequate, independent assessment of the submitted designs;

the value of a demonstrator was not made clear, nor did the SSA make a meaningful assessment of demonstrator vehicles and their relevance to proposed designs; and

cost was undervalued by the SSA in its determination, disregarding the significant cost savings offered by Northrop Grumman.