Sierra Nevada Corp. is urging the Air Force to issue a plan and timeline for moving forward with the Afghanistan Light Air Support (LAS) contract aircraft selection process, according to a company statement.
In the statement issued yesterday, the company asks the service to “move expeditiously,” make use of the information it received under its original source selection and maintain the high standards for aircraft performance in the original request for proposal.
“Given the current situation: An Air Force review that is limited to internal processes, a looming deadline to get the LAS aircraft into service in Afghanistan and more than 14 months already spent assessing the competing aircraft, SNC and its partners believe there is no reason the Air Force should not now move quickly to put forward a plan for an expedited process review,” the statement says.
Sierra Nevada’s partner for the LAS program is Brazil’s Embraer, supplying its A-29 Super Tucano propeller aircraft. Hawker Beechcraft and its AT-6 was the competitor.
The company has also received clarification from the Air Force that its investigation of the LAS contract award is focused on the service’s paperwork issues and not the actions of either offeror in the competition.
The Air Force said last week it intended to terminate the $355 million contract, originally awarded to Sierra Nevada, over documentation supporting the award decision. In late September, the service awarded the contract to Sierra Nevada after earlier eliminating Hawker Beechcraft for not having its proposal in the “competitive range” (Defense Daily, Feb. 29).
Hawker Beechcraft protested the decision with the Government Accountability Office, but the case was dismissed on the grounds the company didn’t file a timely protest request. It then filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeking to block execution of the contract on the basis of the Air Force “being unresponsive to a request for an explanation on as to how it lost.” This move prompted the Air Force to order Sierra Nevada to stop work until the dispute was resolved (Defense Daily, Jan. 6).
The Light Air Support program is designed to provide Afghanistan with a light ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft. Sierra Nevada’s contract is for at least 20 planes.