WASHINGTON — Raytheon has filed a suit against the US Air Force in hopes of blocking a service decision to reevaluate a major radar contract awarded to the Massachusetts-based company.
The company seeks to prevent the service from revisiting its Three Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) contract award, which was given to Raytheon on Oct. 6 of last year.
"On January 26, 2015, Raytheon filed an action in the Court of Federal Claims seeking to preserve the Air Force's contract award," company spokesman Michael Nachshen wrote in response to a query from Defense News. "We believe the Air Force awarded the procurement to Raytheon in a properly conducted bid process and we remain confident in our 3DELRR solution."
The Air Force selected Raytheon over Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Both competitors quickly filed protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), setting off a 100-day protest period in which the GAO investigated whether the Air Force properly selected its winner.
Days before that 100-day window was to run out, the Air Force voluntarily announced it would reevaluate the contract award, a move that likely signified the service expected the GAO to side with one of the protesting companies.
That reevaluation period is expected to take around four months, and could lead to a total recompetition of the program. However, if the Court of Federal Claims sides with Raytheon, it would maintain the decision to give Raytheon the contract.
A spokesman for the Air Force did not immediately return a request for comment.
The 3DELRR program will replace the service's aging TPS-75 expeditionary radars with a planned 35 new systems. The radar was the first to be awarded under the Pentagon's Defense Exportability Features Initiative, which aims to bake in exportability to defense programs at the early stages of development.
Email: amehta@defensenews.com
Twitter: @AaronMehta
Aaron Mehta was deputy editor and senior Pentagon correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Defense Department and its international partners.
