Raytheon [RTN] on Thursday appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit the dismissal of its lawsuit against the Air Force for taking corrective action on the Three Dimensional Long Range Radar (3DELRR) contract it previously awarded the company in October.
Judge Margaret Sweeney on Friday also denied Raytheon’s request for an emergency injunction pending resolution of its appeal. Sweeney did issue an expedited briefing schedule, ordering the Air Force and defendant-intervenors Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] to respond to Raytheon’s appeal by no later than May 22. Raytheon, Sweeney ordered, must file a reply in support of its motion by no later than May 27.
Raytheon lawyer Mark Colley of the law firm Arnold & Porter filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on May 14, notifying the court that it was appealing Sweeney’s decision to dismiss the company’s lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for Federal Claims, via the federal goverment’s PACER online court record service, shows an appeal, received May 15, was docketed May 18.
A federal judge with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on May 11 ruled in favor of the Air Force, dealing a setback to Raytheon in its effort to secure the 3DELRR contract which is initially worth $20 million for engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), but is speculated to potentially be worth more than $1 billion (Defense Daily, May 12). Air Force spokesman Justin Oakes said Monday a previous stop work order issued to Raytheon in October remains in effect.
After Raytheon won the 3DELRR, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which lost out on the 3DELRR award, filed bid protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Northrop Grumman argued in a May 7 redacted court filing that the Air Force’s 3DELRR procurement was fundamentally flawed in several ways. One was that the service gave offerors materially different instructions regarding how the agency would evaluate and score their proposals.
Northrop Grumman said in its May 7 filing that GAO indicated, in a non-binding outcome prediction session, that it was likely to sustain the protests. The Air Force then decided to reopen discussions with all three offerors and evaluate new technical and cost/price proposals.
3DELRR is designed to detect and track hostile aircraft or missions at long range and is to replace the AN/TPS-75 air defense radar originally supplied by Northrop Grumman (Defense Daily, Jan. 21).]