Lockheed Martin [LMT] claims that nine gigabytes of recently uncovered data will show that its vehicle was measured unfairly against Oshkosh’s [OSK] winning Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV).
The company argues that the Army’s evaluation of the competing tactical trucks included “numerous, substantial flaws,” Lockheed Martin said in its complaint filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The bid protest was formally filed with the court Dec. 16, escalating and canceling out Lockheed Martin’s then-pending protest to the Government Accountability Office (GAO.)
The complaint initially was sealed from public view. Redacted versions of the complaint, a motion for the court to stop Oshkosh from building JLTVs and Lockheed Martin’s argument were made public on Dec. 31.
Lockheed Martin’s main complaint lies with the Army’s treatment of changes to the competing vehicles made between the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase and the proposals for low-rate initial production. Oshkosh was allowed to make changes to its EMD vehicle without supporting documentation while Lockheed Martin was pressured to explain how its changes would impact its overall bid, Lockheed Martin alleges.
Photo: Lockheed Martin
“Both Lockheed Martin and Oshkosh made post-EMD design changes in their proposals, and those changes were [redacted]. But the Agency treated the offerors very differently,” Lockheed Martin’s complaint reads.
During the EMD phase, the Army drove eight of each competitor’s JLTVs for 20,000 miles and counted the average miles between hardware mission failure, or what the Army unhelpfully calls MMBHMF. The service’s requirement was for the JLTV to cover at least 3,800 miles before a major breakdown. The Army then assigned each company a “demonstrated” and “assessed” reliability of the vehicles using the EMD test data.
That score was then used to calculate each vehicle’s reliability, which in turn factored into each bid’s total estimated cost. Reliability scores were more heavily weighted in the evaluation, even though the Army said its requirements were assessed equally, Lockheed Martin alleges. Companies with higher reliability scores were favored because they could reduce the total cost estimate of their bid by proving their vehicle could save money over time with a higher operational availability rate.
Based on EMD performance, each company–at the time AM General also was competing for an LRIP contract–was allowed to tweak its design before pitching a vehicle for an initial order contract. The Army evaluated the changes and asked for supporting documentation on configurations that differed substantially from those already tested.
Army evaluators allegedly told Lockheed Martin that “a change is a change is a change” and required substantiating documentation for every one of more than 10 design tweaks to its EMD vehicle configuration. The Army determined each of the unspecified number of changes to the Lockheed Martin vehicle could change the vehicle’s reliability while none of Oshkosh’s changes were found to be significant, the suit asserts.
The Army determined that post-EMD changes made to the Oshkosh vehicle did not substantially differ from the configuration it had already tested, and therefore gave the company a pass on producing supporting material to explain the changes. Lockheed Martin contends that the documents discovered in December show that decision was made as early as March.
“For Lockheed Martin, the mere potential of an HMF was enough to find a meaningful variation in design,” it says. “In contrast, for Oshkosh, the Agency required a finding that an HMF was likely before it would have found a meaningful variation.”
The documents go on to say the Army “failed to subject Oshkosh’s changes to the standard applied to Lockheed Martin. Moreover, the Agency credited Oshkosh for improving Reliability through changes that the Agency asserted elsewhere could not impact reliability.”
Much of the evidence Lockheed Martin offers to support its case is contained in a 9-gigbyte trove of “thousands” documents produced by the Army on Dec. 3, the 88th day of the GAO’s 100-day bid protest evaluation process. It was this massive disclosure, and the inability of the GAO to consider it prior to a decision, that led Lockheed Martin to file its suit in federal court.
“If Lockheed Martin had been provided the documents in a timely manner, it would have pursued different issues and lines of argument in the GAO protest,” the suit says. “It would have requested different witnesses to testify and asked different questions. The entire conduct of the GAO protest would have differed”.
Oshkosh and the Army are expected to file replies to Lockheed Martin’s complaint by Wednesday. Lockheed Martin will then have until Jan. 15 to reply. A hearing of the case is scheduled for Jan. 20 in the National Courts Building in downtown Washington, D.C.