The Government Accountability Office has sustained another protest Northrop Grumman filed against the Navy's decision to award L3Harris Technologies a contract for the Next Generation Jammer-Low Band Capability Block 1.
In an Aug. 18 decision released publicly Thursday, GAO sustained Northrop's allegation that the agency misevaluated L3Harris's proposal when the Navy rated it as acceptable despite the fact L3Harris did not demonstrate compliance with a material solicitation requirement.
GAO recommended the Navy "reopen discussions and request revised proposals; evaluate proposals consistent with the evaluation criteria; and make a new source selection decision."
The Navy said in a statement that the service believes "it adhered to all required processes and procedures associated with awarding a competitively negotiated contract and applied the evaluation methodology fairly and consistently to all proposals."
"For this reason, the agency will not implement GAO's second recommendation to re-open discussions and allow the offerors to resubmit proposals," the Navy said.
In a separate decision released in September, GAO sustained Northrop's protest that the Navy failed to consider the impact of an apparent conflict of interest as a Navy employee working on developing the specifications for the program was negotiating for employment with L3Harris at the same time.
L3Harris is challenging GAO’s decision in court, filing suit in September in the Court of Federal Claims. The Navy launched an independent review of the contract last month.
GAO did not sustain two other charges from Northrop in a third decision, also dated Aug. 18 and released Thursday. These charges were that L3Harris had an unfair advantage by hiring former Navy employees, creating a conflict of interest; and that the Navy improperly interpreted solicitation requirements when assigning Northrop's technical approach a deficiency.
The Navy awarded L3Harris a $496 million engineering and manufacturing development contract for the NGJ-LB program in December 2020. The NGJ-LB is an external jamming pod electronic attack capability for the EA-18G Growler.
Northrop challenged the Navy's evaluation of L3Harris' proposal in regards to the jamming performance element of the technical factor, GAO's decision on the matter states.
"According to Northrop, L3Harris's proposal failed to demonstrate that its proposed approach met certain threshold requirements set forth in the solicitation and, as a consequence, the agency should have assigned the proposal a deficiency, rendering it unacceptable for award," GAO wrote. "Based on our review of the record, we agree with the protester that the agency's evaluation was unreasonable."
Northrop believes the Navy should have rated L3Harris' proposal as deficient for failing to meet a threshold requirement relating to measuring signal strength using a bounded area percentage, according to the GAO decision.
The Navy argued that the request for proposals did not require L3Harris to submit a complete design and that the company had a credible path to meet the requirements, according to GAO.
"Notwithstanding the agency's arguments to the contrary, we agree with the protester that the agency's evaluation of L3Harris's proposal was not consistent with the terms of the solicitation," the decision states.
GAO reported there is no dispute that the Navy's evaluators found L3Harris' proposal did not meet the threshold requirements for the relevant specification.
"Moreover, L3Harris's alleged 'path forward' was little more than the firm's cautiously optimistic statements about a potential ability to comply, although hedging that 'improvements in EIRP do not directly translate to an increase in compliance' and that positive impacts on BAPs were 'as of yet, unquantified,'" GAO wrote. "L3Harris's proposal was therefore technically unacceptable."
Northrop was competitively prejudiced by the Navy's unreasonable evaluation of the L3Harris proposal, GAO determined.
"Had L3Harris been properly assigned a deficiency, both proposals would have been technically unacceptable and the agency would have been required to reopen discussions, giving Northrop an opportunity to revise its proposal and address its deficiency," GAO's decision said.
L3Harris spokesman Matthew Bates said the company believes the Navy made the right choice in the initial contracting process.
"We remain confident the Navy made the correct initial selection and then conducted a full, transparent review of the Next Generation Jammer-Low Band contract award," he said. "We look forward to getting back to work as soon as possible to deliver this critical need to the fleet."