{"id":29644,"date":"2015-11-10T08:01:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T08:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2015\/11\/10\/air-force-confident-bomber-contract-award-is-airtight\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:24:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:24:02","slug":"air-force-confident-bomber-contract-award-is-airtight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/thought-leadership\/2015\/11\/10\/air-force-confident-bomber-contract-award-is-airtight\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force \u2018Confident\u2019 Bomber Contract Award Is Airtight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>DUBAI \u2014 The US Air Force is &#8220;confident&#8221; that the award of the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) contract to Northrop Grumman<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> Government<\/span> can withstand\u00a0the protest recently filed by losing team Boeing and Lockheed Martin, top leadership said here today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I am confident that we collectively \u2014 and again, &#8216;we&#8217; the Air Force, but we had independent peer reviews, as well \u2014 that, collectively, we did a very thorough job,&#8221; Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said during a Nov. 10 press conference at the Dubai Air Show<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> Nov. 10<\/span>. &#8220;The evaluation was done according to the [Request for Proposal] evaluation factors.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Pentagon announced Northrop as the winner for the competition, which aims to provide 80-100 new bombers for the service to replace the B-52 and B-1 fleets, on Oct. 27. On Nov. 6, Boeing and Lockheed filled their formal protest with the\u00a0Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The GAO now has 100 days to review the protest, examine the Air Force&#8217;s source-selection process and issue a ruling.\u00a0The Air Force expects Boeing&#8217;s protest will delay the contract by that 100-day period, but no more, James indicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;What is now going to occur\u00a0is about a 100-day period in which the GAO will be reviewing the contract award, so we expect that, after that 100 days is up, we will proceed accordingly,&#8221; James said. &#8220;So that is the amount of the delay you might see, the period of the GAO review.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the protest is successful, the GAO could force the Air Force to re-bid the contract, causing further delay to the Air Force&#8217;s decades-long effort to build a new bomber. However, James pointed out that the GAO may simply ask the Air Force to &#8220;redo&#8221; some aspects of the source-selection process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The GAO, if they found certain discrepancies, could ask that we redo some of the factors,&#8221; James said.\u00a0&#8220;It would not necessarily be an entirely new contract situation<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">,&#8221; James said<\/span>.\u00a0<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> &#8220;<\/span>So it really depends \u2014 it\u2019s too early to say.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Air Force, clearly eager to avoid a repeat of the\u00a0tanker saga of the last decade when a Boeing protest eventually reversed the original award to Airbus, has taken great pains to insulate the LRS-B award. James reiterated during the press conference that the service tasked not one, but two, independent cost estimators to evaluate the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We had a very deliberate process, we took our time, it was key that we do it correctly, we believe that we did do it correctly,&#8221; James said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not just our belief, we had independent reviews at different levels within the Department of Defense to include a legal review, so I would just like to stand by and wait to see what the GAO assesses.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But despite the Air Force&#8217;s best efforts, a protest could delay the program and spark an ugly public relations battle, particularly given Boeing&#8217;s clout on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Boeing and Lockheed Martin called the selection process for the LRS-B &#8220;fundamentally flawed&#8221; in a joint statement last week. Specifically, they take issue with the cost evaluation performed by the government, saying it did not properly reward the team&#8217;s proposals to break the upward-spiraling historical cost curves of defense acquisitions, and did not properly evaluate the relative or comparative risk of Northrop Grumman&#8217;s ability to perform, as required by the solicitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Northrop Grumman, maker of the stealth B-2 bomber, won the award in part because of a projected cost per plane of $511 million in 2010 dollars, well below the Pentagon&#8217;s cost cap of $550 million in 2010 dollars. In fiscal 2016 dollars, those figures translate into $563 million and $606 million, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Email: <a href=\"mailto:lseligman@defensenews.com\">lseligman@defensenews.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/Twitter.com\/laraseligman\">@laraseligman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The service believes it will be cleared in a protest over its next-gen bomber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[29,33,24],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1820],"class_list":["post-29644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-show-dailies","category-home","category-thought-leadership"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"3L55SUIYTZCNPDLYTPJ5TUZWSY","arc_canonical_url":"\/thought-leadership\/digital-show-dailies\/dubai-air-show\/2015\/11\/10\/air-force-confident-bomber-contract-award-is-airtight\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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