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WASHINGTON: The U.S. Government Accountability Office has again told the Air Force it should request revised bids in a $15 billion helicopter competition and start from scratch in evaluating them.
In a surprise move, the Air Force last November picked Boeing Co. and a variant of its CH-47 Chinook helicopter to build 146 new helicopters to replace its aging fleet of Sikorsky HH-60G Pave Hawks.
The decision was immediately challenged by Sikorsky, a unit of United Technologies Corp., and Lockheed Martin Corp.. The GAO last month upheld their protest, saying the Air Force was inconsistent in the way it evaluated the operating and support costs of the competing helicopters.
The Air Force initially said the ruling was confined to a technical issue and it planned a quick and narrow resolution.
But when the GAO last week released its full ruling, it emphasized that the protesters had raised numerous other issues and that it expected the competition to be redone.
On Friday, in a letter to the Air Force, GAO reiterated that it did not tackle the other issues because it had already called for a whole new competition.
“We note that because the recommended remedy includes reopening discussions with offerors and then requesting revised proposals, necessarily leading to a new evaluation, it is our view that the recommended remedy renders the issues not addressed in our decision academic,” wrote David Ashen, the GAO lawyer handling the case in the letter.
He said the parties could request reconsideration of the protest ruling if they disagreed and said the GAO was ready to discuss the procedural issues with the parties, if needed.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson said the GAO's letter was “pretty blunt.”
“It's clear that GAO is discouraging the Air Force from doing a fast and dirty recalculation of costs,” he said. “GAO's letter makes clear that … there must be a complete recompetition of the helicopter program.”
Michael Golden, GAO managing associate general counsel, on Monday said the GAO was now waiting for the Air Force to act.
“It's such an unusual occurrence we don't have a lot of history on that situation,” Golden said, when asked about how GAO would handle any follow-up protests.
The Air Force had no immediate response to the GAO letter.
The Air Force says it is thoroughly reviewing the GAO decision and remains committed to openness and transparency.
“The warfighter desperately needs this combat capability and we intend to expeditiously resolve these issues,” Air Force acquisition chief Sue Payton said in a statement on Friday.
Sikorsky said it strongly believed the “reopening and reevaluation” the GAO had recommended would not need to be limited to the issue of operational and support costs.
Lockheed spokesman Greg Caires agreed, saying the company looked forward to learning more about how the Air Force intended to respond to the ruling.
If the protesting companies do not agree with its resolution, they can revisit the issue with the GAO — or take the matter to federal claims court.
Thompson said the Air Force's resistance to the GAO recommendations were puzzling since it only recently regained control over its main acquisition programs — power that had been transferred to the Pentagon after a huge procurement scandal over a proposed tanker lease program with Boeing.
In fact, Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg still controls the purse strings on key Air Force space programs.
“If the Air Force does not conduct a complete recompetition of the program, that will cast doubt on its whole acquisition process,” he said. “They're going to get themselves in trouble again.”
