Boeing officials decide not to protest JTRS AMF contract award d By John Reed Inside the Air Force April 11, 2008 Boeing officials announced this week that they will not protest the Pentagon’s decision to award the $766 million contract to develop the Airborne Maritime Fixed version the military’s software-based tactical radio -- the Joint Tactical Radio System (AMF JTRS) -- to rival Lockheed Martin. “Following the AMF JTRS debrief, Boeing has decided not to protest the award,” reads a April 7 e-mail from Boeing spokesman Mike Fanelli. “We will continue delivering reliable, network-centric capabilities to our customers today, while anticipating their requirements for tomorrow.” A Boeing-led team -- the main contractor for development of the ground version of the radio -- had been in fierce competition against a Lockheed-led team for the award to develop the airborne-maritime version of the radio, one of the largest contracts of the current fiscal year. On March 28, the Defense Department announced Lockheed was the winner in that contest. Last week Fanelli said the Chicago-based defense giant would wait until DOD’s debrief on why the Pentagon chose Lockheed’s proposal for the development of the AMF component (Inside the Air Force, April 4, p13). A DOD official said that Lockheed’s offering had more value, less risk and better technology than Boeing’s bid when asked why the Pentagon chose Lockheed. “The AMF JTRS competition was a best-value determination and . . . Lockheed Martin’s proposal was low price, low risk and had greater technical solutions,” reads an April 9 e-mail from JTRS joint program office spokesman Steven Davis. Boeing’s decision not to protest comes as no surprise to analyst Philip Finnegan, given the fact that the Chicago- based company traditionally does not file protests. “It might be a difficult protest for them anyway, in light of the problems that the cluster one [now known as the Ground Mobile Radio] had, which culminated in a stop work order” in 2005, said Finnegan, director of corporate analysis with aviation consulting firm Teal Group, during an April 9 telephone interview. Furthermore, the company already is embroiled in a protest over the Pentagon’s recent award of the $35 billion KC-X tanker contract to a Northrop Grumman-led team. In January, Pentagon acquisitions officials acknowledged that the Boeing-managed ground version of the radio had breached the Nunn-McCurdy statute -- which limits per-unit cost growth for major weapon systems -- after its costs skyrocketed by $1 billion between September and November of 2007 bringing the total cost for the groundbased units to $21.3 billion for 104,425 radios. The ground version of the radio serves as the backbone for the entire JTRS system since the airborne-maritime and man-portable versions will piggyback off the ground version’s networks. (Archives)