The Air Force said it expects to quickly resolve a legal challenge to its decision to award Sierra Nevada and Brazilian partner Embraer a contract to build at least 20 aircraft for the Afghan government under the Light Air Support (LAS) program.
The Air Force nevertheless issued a temporary stop work order on the contract this week pending the outcome of the legal challenge by Hawker Beechcraft, which claims its bid was unfairly excluded from the competition.
The Air Force maintained that the competition that produced the Dec. 22 award valued at $355 million to Sierra Nevada was fair and transparent.
“The Air Force is confident in the merits of its contract award decision and anticipates that the litigation will be quickly resolved,” the service said in a statement.
The Sierra Nevada/Embraer team had been expected to prevail with its A-29 Super Tucano offering after the Air Force informed Hawker Beechcraft in November that its proposed AT-6 had been eliminated from the competition (Defense Daily, Nov. 21, 2011).
Hawker Beechcraft said last week it had filed a lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims seeking to block the Air Force from executing the contract, complaining that the service has been unresponsive to request for an explanation as to how it lost.
“This is yet another example of the Air Force’s lack of transparency throughout this competition,” Bill Boisture, Hawker Beechcraft chairman and CEO, said last week. “With this development, it now seems even clearer that the Air Force intended to award the contract to Embraer from early in this process.”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) had also rejected a Hawker Beechcraft protest.
Following the stop work order, Sierra Nevada said it also expected a speedy resolution of the case.
“We remain confident that the issue will resolved expeditiously,” the company said. “These critical LAS capabilities need to be made available soon in order to support our men and women in uniform and our partners in Afghanistan.”
The aircraft are intended to be used to train Afghan forces to fly air support missions as the U.S. military moves toward drawing down its presence.
The Air Force is also looking into buying its own aircraft under a separate program known as Light Attack/Armed Reconnaissance (LAAR).
The service has identified the need for a small aircraft that could be used for low scale air support missions that do not require the heavy firepower and higher cost associated with using traditional support aircraft.