Lockheed Martin files second protest over multi-billion dollar Pentagon award

Less than two weeks after losing a bid to win a $100 billion to build the nation’s next-generation stealth bomber, defense giant Lockheed Martin and partner Boeing Inc. filed a formal bid protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying the selection process was “fundamentally flawed.”

In the protest of the long-range strike bomber contract to Northrop Grumman on Oct. 27, Lockheed Martin and Boeing asked the GAO on Friday to open a formal docket to review the decision for the largest contract from the Pentagon in more than a decade.

“Boeing and Lockheed Martin concluded the selection process for the Long Range Strike Bomber was fundamentally flawed. The cost evaluation performed by the government did not properly reward the contractors’ proposals to break the upward-spiraling historical cost curves of defense acquisitions, or properly evaluate the relative or comparative risk of the competitors’ ability to perform, as required by the solicitation,” Lockheed Martin and Boeing said in a joint release.

Now on the GAOs’ docket, this is Lockheed Martin’s second formal protest in two months over a high-profile government contract that went to a rival. After losing the $30 billion Joint Light Armored Vehicle contract to Oshkosh Defense in late August, Lockheed Martin filed a formal protest of that award on Sept. 8.