Too many winning contracts being challenged, Pentagon says

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

Quit complaining.

That's the message from the Pentagon and Congress to military companies that cry foul when they don't win contracts.

Resolving the protests costs the government time and money. That means it can take longer to build needed combat gear or buy critical supplies, making U.S. troops and American taxpayers the real losers.

... It's become a big enough problem that the House Armed Services Committee has raised the possibility of fining companies that submit "frivolous or improper" protests to the GAO. Complaining has become too reflexive, the committee said in a May 16 report, and it wants to discourage contractors from lodging protests as a "stalling or punitive tactic."

Read more: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/364435_defensecontracts24.html

[Lasher]

1. Makes you long for the efficiencies of no-bid contracts.

Just pay 10 times more than you need to in exclusive awards to your cronies. Now that's the way to support the troops, pronto!

[searchingforlight]

2. I agree. They are paying the price for years of abusive practices.

[saigon68]

23. Money pissed away to gangsters like Cheney

[fasttense]

3. When I was doing contracts for the Navy in the 90s,

we might have had about 5% of them challenged. It is a sign that something is seriously wrong when the percent of challenges increases no mater how these DOD folks try to spin this as simply frivolous challenges.

It could mean a corrupt award, that the contracting officer (CO) is not trusted by the bidders, that the CO has recently changed the way he awards contracts -either going from fair to corrupt or corrupt to fair. Anyway it is a red flag that there is something funny going on.

I would take a close look at contracting officers who have an increase in challenges.

[SpiralHawk]

4. And I'd bet a sack of doughnuts those contracting officers are republicons...

...just because it is logical, republicons having long ago demonstrated their Total Corruption.

[Lasher]

5. Maybe there's a rush to reward as many cronies as possible.

There'll be a new administration in January, you know.

Or maybe some of these contractors are not as reluctant as before to challenge corrupt awards, since with an impending changing of the guard they have less fear of retribution. Whatever the cause, this is yet another defense procurement red flag that will be ignored.

[BigDaddy44]

14. You've clearly never dealt with contracting officers

Every experience I have ever had has been with someone who meticulously follows rules and is apolotical. If something goes wrong, the contracting officer is the first person they go after, and most are just career civil servants who don't want to mess anything up.

[fasttense]

15. They use to be that way (by the way contracting officers were frequently

military officers in the 90s and not necessarily civil servants). But I believe a lot of honest civil servant contracting officers were purged by the bushes

[Overseas]

8. Exact;y! They are likely challenged because they are crony deals. /nt

[kirby]

6. The real truth...

What really happens is that when the military companies cry foul and protest, in the end they wind up getting a piece of the contract. Therefore it is in their corporate interest to game the system by protesting because they know the Pentagon/DOD will award them a piece of the contract. Believe me, companies would not expend the time and money to protest these contract awards if their was not a benefit.

[izquierdista]

7. Here's an idea

Get rid of all the DOD's contracting officers. Replace them with "nationalization" officers. Government employees who would determine the fair value to offer Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, etc., for the factories they use to make munitions. For GOCOs, the plan would be even easier, just tell the C that their management services are no longer needed and to buzz off.

The first step in getting rid of the military-industrial complex is to bar industry from participating in it.

[Crowman1979]

9. Exactly!

The Springfield Armory for instance was a goverment run weapons manufacturer. Made for the sole purpose of not being dependent on foreign nations for weapons. It would be cheaper to pay the individual or team designers and inventors, patent royalties and manufacture the weapons nationally; then to deal with the added costs of paying executive salaries and stockholder dividends.

[Aviation Pro]

10. The recent award given to EADS/Airbus over Boeing....

...for the next generation of airborne refuelers is an example of why oversight is necessary and why protests are not necessarily frivolous. Boeing complained that EADS/Airbus submitted a proposal that used the A340 platform, an aircraft that exceeded the specifications of the RFP, and this factor is what swayed the Pentagon to select it over Boeing's entry, a 767 platform.

[soothsayer]

11. Didn't the pilots reject the Boeing because it looked like a pregnant guppy?

The other plane was sleeker, and since the military wants to keep the pilots happy, they asked which one they'd prefer to fly, or am I thinking of a different thang.

[Aviation Pro]

13. The 737 is the guppy....

...I don't think the RFP called for pilot happiness.

[depakid]

16. Nevertheless, Northop/EADS had the better aircraft

and after the fiasco Boeing created the last go around, they ought to feel fortunate that they were considered at all.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

17. Boeing should have been banned from the competition entirely

their protests are completely frivolous. They threw up an expensive half-baked bid based on the assumption they could just smash together several 767 models in a very short time frame. They also made the assumption the airforce wasn't going to pick up the phone and call the Italians and Japanese and chat about their 767 tankers that are a fiasco in their own right.

Exceeding the specifications of an RFP is a GOOD THING especially when the difference in price is insignificant.

Boeing knew what the competition was but they thought they had paid enough bribes for them to win the order.

[Aviation Pro]

18. As opposed to a subsidized outfit like Airbus....

...sorry, I support Boeing over Airbus in everyway shape and form.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

20. The 787 is the most subsudized commercial airliner in history

Infact the near collapse of the 787 program can be significantly blamed on outsourcing work based on which states and countries would offer the largest subsudies.

Boeing can continue to fuck themselves, it seems to be one area they are very strong in.

[Aviation Pro]

21. Unlike, of course, the A380.....

...or the 350.

:sarcasm:

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

22. only in magnitude

the 787 is more highly subsudized than either - and unlike Airbus the subsudies Boeing received from the Japanese are illegal under WTO rules.

[rabies1]

12. Because too many have gone unchallenged for far too long

[Name removed]

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