
The Defense Department’s trend of procuring commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) bandwidth through lowest price, technically acceptable (LPTA) contract evaluations stifles industry’s innovation to provide best value and supplies warfighters with inferior product, according to the CEO of a major COMSATCOM provider. Ed Spitler, president of Astrium Services Government, said last week Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) state an agency can obtain best value by using any one, or a combination of, source selection approaches. These include LPTA and tradeoff source selection…