A partnership co-led by Raytheon Co., parent of Tucson-based Missile Systems, is protesting the recent award of a $2.04 billion military transport-plane contract.
Among Raytheon’s complaints: Its losing bid for a U.S. battlefield transport plane cost at least 15 percent less than the winning offering by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc.
Raytheon and EADS CASA North America led a partnership known as “Team JCA” to compete for the contract. The Raytheon work was based out of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems im El Segundo. Raytheon filed a protest of the award on June 22 with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which has 100 days to respond.
Besides the cost disparity, Team JCA said “there were errors in the specific evaluation of data and the application of the evaluation criteria.”
But a corporate spokesman for Waltham, Mass-based Raytheon Co. told Associated Press Financial News the company does not want the Army to re-compete the contract, but to explain why it selected a more expensive plane and did not give more weight to maintenance and other long-term costs in its appraisal of bids.
You can read the Team JCA release, authored by Raytheon, here.
The release quotes a familiar figure in Tucson: Jon Jones, formerly the second-highest ranking exec in Raytheon Missile Systems and now president of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.
Protests are SOP in the defense biz. RTN has to make a stand so the Big Boys will take notice. Calculated effort that will go No Where. Why did it take Raytheon 5 days to announce its protest?
Raytheon Missile Systems had nothing whatsoever to do with Joint Cargo aircraft program.
— Doris 06/27/2007 09:29 PM #
Proposal evaluation protocals should be applied evenly across the board. If they were and a more costly aircraft was justifiably considered superior, so be it…. If that is not the case, why not?
— Earl 07/02/2007 01:10 PM #
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Raytheon Missile Systems had nothing whatsoever to do with Joint Cargo aircraft program.
— Doris 06/27/2007 09:29 PM #
— Earl 07/02/2007 01:10 PM #