Lockheed protests $1.16 billion contract award to Northrop

BAMS program is based at Pax River

Friday, May 9, 2008

The Navy announced on April 22 that Northrop Grumman was being awarded the contract to provide the Navy with its Global Hawk systems development and demonstration platform for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aerial Systems (BAMS UAS) platform.

The program is based at Patuxent River Naval Air Station.

At the time of the award announcement, Capt. Bob Dishman, NAVAIR’s BAMS program manager, said the price tag was ‘‘the Navy’s largest investment in unmanned aircraft systems to date. The extraordinary efforts leading to this announcement have helped the BAMS UAS program begin to develop a persistent [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capability never before available to the fleet.”

Lockheed Martin spokesperson Tierney Helmers, in a statement, said the company ‘‘is committed to proposing and delivering best value solutions for our customers’ mission requirements. Lockheed Martin protests contract awards infrequently, and only when we believe that the benefits of our offerings were not fully considered during the evaluation process.

‘‘With regard to the [BAMS] competition,” the Lockheed Martin statement continued, ‘‘information provided to us during our debrief indicated that we offered a technically compliant and awardable solution at significantly lower cost, leading us to request a Government Accountability Office review.”

‘‘The U.S. Navy chose Northrop Grumman for the [BAMS UAV] contract,” countered a Northrop Grumman statement, ‘‘through a deliberate and meticulous source selection process designed to make a best value determination on behalf of the Navy. Northrop Grumman’s BAMS UAS offering provides the most technically capable, lowest risk and best overall value system for our Navy customer and our nation’s warfighters. We are confident the award will stand. Until we have reviewed the details of the competitor’s protest, we have no further comment.”

The GAO has 100 days to rule on the Lockheed Martin protest.

The Navy is developing the BAMS platform to both work independently and in concert with another NAVAIR project, the P-8A Poseidon Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft.

The MMA is scheduled to go into the fleet in the next two to five years and will replace the Navy’s aging fleet of P-3 Orions, which have been providing aerial reconnaissance for the Navy since the mid-1960s.

The first Poseidon test aircraft are scheduled to arrive at Pax River next year.

When it becomes operational, the BAMS system is intended to provide extended unmanned intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance-gathering capabilities, delivering up-to-date information in real time to joint operation and fleet commanders.