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

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. When Motorola did a little digging and found out, they were understandably more than a little miffed. Harris never asked to buy our radios, Motorola said, and we wouldn’t have sold them any if they’d asked, because (you can here the “duh” hidden behind the legalese) they’re our competitor. Nor would any third party reseller have had the legal right to provide the radios to Harris. So there’s no way Harris could have made good on its offer — as the Army should have known. In fact, the Army’s own requirement said that bidders had to submit written proof that they either had everything they were offering or could obtain it through existing business relationships. Understandably, the legal experts at GAO ruled in Motorola’s favor as soon as they stopped laughing. It’s certainly not unheard of for a defense prime to offer its competitors’ product, but it’s usually just a part of a much larger weapon system (think the F-35 and Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin) one piece of a larger offer. But in this case, GAO said, the Army unequivocally broke its own rules. This lack of judgment isn’t new. The Army has a dismal acquisition record over the last 20 years, wasting by its own estimate an average of $1 billion every year since 1996 on programs that were never bought. As the Decker-Wagner report concluded: “Finally, Army acquisition has proved ineffective and inefficient, as demonstrated by the 22 major acquisition programs terminated since the end of the Cold War.” Naturally, no one involved in this was eager to comment for the record. “Harris stands behind its solution for the U.S. Army and is fully committed to working through the process required by the Government Accountability Office,” a company spokesman said. Motorola, who couldn’t be expected to say much, declined to speak for the record. All the Army Materiel Command, which handled the contract, would tell us was that “Under applicable procurement statutes, AMC must notify the GAO if we have not fully implemented GAO’s corrective action recommendations within 60 days receipt of the decision. AMC is currently reviewing the decision, with its recommendations, and will decide how best to proceed within that time.” But it really looks like the Army will have to redo the competition. Here’s the final irony: If the Army did indeed hold the competition again, right now, Harris would probably win. While the whole dispute was dragging on, Harris got its own radio approved by the Michigan state authorities — which means it wouldn’t have to offer its competitor’s product after all.

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

Posted on February 7, 2014

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