GAO Slaps Harris For Offering Its Competitor’s Radios For Army Deal

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/gao-slaps-harris-for-offering-competitors-radios-for-army-deal/



GAO Slaps Harris For Offering Its Competitor’s Radios For Army Deal
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 07, 2014 at 2:25 PM

The military can move in mysterious ways, especially when it comes to the arcane and often-dysfunctional bureaucratics of buying gear. But in our combined 31 years of covering the Defense Department, we here at Breaking Defense had never seen this one before: a defense contractor getting busted for trying to sell the government its competitor‘s product.

It’s not a big-dollar story, but it’s a bizarre one. This week, Congress’s watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, released its latest round of rulings on defense contracts it had been asked to overturn. Such contract disputes have gotten more and more common as defense contractors compete more and more desperately for shrinking budgets. But the Government Accounting Office is a harsh mistress: GAO overturns only 3 to 4 percent of disputed contracts. So, on Tuesday, when the agency said it upheld Motorola Solution’s complaint against the Army for improperly awarding a $2.5 million radio contract to Harris Corp., it was remarkable just for the fact that Motorola won.

But even more remarkable — and actually kind of funny — was GAO’s reason for ruling against Harris. Harris is a sharp-elbowed and highly successful newcomer to the hotly contested world of Army radio contracts. But in this particular contract — to provide a new radio system for the Army’s Detroit Arsenal (last year’s Navy Yard shootings show, such emergency systems are important) — it turns out Harris only won the competition with Motorola by offering a Motorola radio, because Harris’s own product didn’t qualify.

At the time the Army had to make its decision, Harris’s radio had not yet been approved by the Michigan Public Safety Communications System — a requirement of the contract, and an understandable one for a facility located in Detroit. But Motorola’s had. So after deeming Harris’s original proposal unsatisfactory, the Army gave Harris wiggle room to offer the Motorola product, in essence, as a back-up in case the Harris radio wasn’t certified in time.



unhappycamper comment: Who owns Motorola?

Answer: Lenovo

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57618535-94/google-said-to-invest-$750m-in-lenovo-as-part-of-motorola-deal/

[LiberalArkie]

1. Motorola radio is still US, just the cellular end went to Lenovo. But Harris RF always was better

than Motorola.

[Victor_c3]

2. For those who don't know, Lenovo is a Chinese company n/t