USA: Boeing-Lockheed Protests Loss On $80b US Bomber

Boeing and Lockheed are trying to keep alive their chance to build the military’s first new bomber since the Cold War.

Chicago/Washington: Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp formally challenged the Pentagon’s selection of Northrop Grumman Corp to build a heavy bomber valued at as much as $80 billion, calling the process “fundamentally flawed.”

The Boeing-Lockheed proposal for the Long-Range Strike Bomber offered the best possible aircraft at a price that would have broken the pattern of increasingly expensive defence acquisitions, Boeing said Friday in a statement. The protest was filed with the US Government Accountability Office.

“The cost evaluation performed by the government did not properly reward the contractors’ proposals to break the upward- spiralling historical cost curves of defence acquisitions, or properly evaluate the relative or comparative risk of the competitors’ ability to perform,” according to the statement.

Boeing and Lockheed are trying to keep alive their chance to build the military’s first new bomber since the Cold War and one of the biggest US weapons systems of the next decade. In winning the work last week, Northrop overcame the world’s two largest defence companies and secured a financial lifeline stretching into the 2020s.

Northrop didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the protest. Boeing successfully challenged an aerial refuelling tanker contract awarded to Northrop and the European parent of plane maker Airbus in 2008.

Boeing slipped 0.2 per cent to $147.72 at 9.39am and Lockheed was down 0.4 per cent to $217.82. Northrop dropped 0.3 per cent to $185.94.

The Air Force’s selection of Northrop was seen as a blow to Boeing’s efforts to find new military contracts to replace its F-15 and F/A-18 fighter jet assembly lines, which are approaching the end of production. Boeing was notified Thursday that it had been dropped from a $3.5 billion contest to ferry supplies to the International Space Station.