13 January 2014
Lockheed Poised To Marry Aegis, AMDR
By Michael Fabey
Aviation Week

Now that Lockheed Martin has decided to drop its protest against the recent award of the U.S. Navy’s Air And Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) contract to Raytheon, the next step for the company is to find a way to stitch its vaunted Aegis combat system together with the service’s future radar.

Jim Sheridan, the director of Lockheed’s Aegis U.S. Navy program, says discussions have not yet started with Raytheon, but the name for the Aegis system to be incorporated into AMDR will be Advanced Capabilities Build (ACB)-Next.

Speaking Jan. 13 at a media briefing on Aegis, Sheridan said he could provide no more details about ACB-Next or Lockheed’s decision to drop the protest.

“Lockheed Martin protested the Navy’s award of the AMDR contract because we believed the merits of our offering were not properly considered during the evaluation process,” Lockheed spokesman Keith Little says. “While we believe that we put forward an industry-leading solution, after receiving additional information we have determined it’s in the best interest of the Navy and Lockheed Martin to withdraw our protest.”

Many analysts saw the Raytheon award as a major victory for the radar manufacturer, and a significant loss for Lockheed.

The Navy late last year awarded Raytheon a $385.7 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for AMDR engineering and manufacturing development efforts, with immediate fiscal year 2013 obligated funding of about $157 million.

The contract includes options for the procurement of up to nine radars, which may be exercised following Milestone C planned for fiscal year 2017. The options, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $1.6 billion.

Under the contract, Raytheon will build, integrate and test the AMDR S-band and Radar Suite Controller (RSC) engineering development models. For the ship sets covered under the contract, the AMDR suite will integrate with the existing AN/SPQ-9B X-band radar. The base contract begins with design work leading to preliminary design review and culminates with system acceptance of the AMDR-S and RSC engineering development models at the end of testing at the Advanced Radar Detection Laboratory, Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kekaha, Hawaii.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the AMDR program’s total price tag will be about $5.8 billion, compared to the $15.2 billion projected earlier.

Little said in October 2013 that Lockheed protested the AMDR contract “after careful consideration,” adding, “We submitted a technically compliant solution at a very affordable price. We do not believe the merits of our offering were properly considered during the evaluation process.”

Lockheed will not say what “additional information” prompted it to drop the protest.