Explanation Of Denial

Last week, InsideDefense.com reported on the Government Accountability Office's denial of a protest filed by Raytheon and Kongsberg that was aimed at forcing the government to compete a follow-on development contract for the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile. The protest came after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency proposed awarding a sole-source deal to Lockheed Martin:

"Raytheon believes competition is the best way to ensure that the DOD and the warfighter receive the best product at the best price," John Patterson, a Raytheon spokesman, told InsideDefense.com in a June 27 statement. "We are disappointed that we will not be allowed to compete for increment 1 of the U.S. Navy's Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare capability. We are confident that we will have a competitive offering for the Increment II OASuW program."

On March 14, DARPA disclosed its intent to award Lockheed a 24-month follow-on contract estimated to be worth $175 million to extend LRASM's development -- a 50 percent increase compared to the original 2009 schedule.

Within a week, Raytheon and Norway's Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace banded together to protest the planned contract award, a move that followed DARPA's rejection of their respective LRASM alternative proposals earlier this year (DefenseAlert, March 21).

LRASM is a modified Air Force Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range that incorporates additional sensors and systems to create a stealthy, survivable and subsonic cruise missile. Pentagon leadership has selected LRASM to meet a high-priority requirement from U.S. Pacific Command for a new air-launched, anti-ship missile by 2018.

InsideDefense.com reported that GAO denied the protest on June 23, according to the agency's legal docket, clearing the way for work to continue on the high-priority system.

An explanation for why GAO rejected the appeal was published today. It concludes:

As discussed above, the record supports the reasonability of DARPA's requirement to further mature the specific LRASM technologies developed by Lockheed under the 2008 BAA, and shows that DARPA had a reasonable basis for concluding that only Lockheed could fulfill these requirements. DARPA's market research and review of the protester's white papers support the agency's conclusion that no other offeror can provide the highly specialized skills and equipment to complete the LRASM development effort, without substantial duplication of costs, or unacceptable delays, where Lockheed is the sole developer of the LRASM, and where DARPA has concluded that no other firms' technologies offer a level of technological maturity equivalent to the LRASM program. Accordingly, we conclude that DARPA, in its sole-source notice and J&A, reasonably determined that a sole-source award to Lockheed was appropriate under the circumstances. We also further conclude that such an award was not prohibited by the 2014 NDAA, where the contract is not a Navy contract for offensive anti-surface warfare weapons systems and, in any event, falls within the NDAA's exemption for development, testing, and fielding of aircraft-launched offensive anti-surface warfare weapons capabilities.