{"id":86597,"date":"2010-07-24T00:47:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T16:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/comtech-to-protest-blue-force-tracking-2-contract-award\/"},"modified":"2010-07-24T00:47:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T16:47:36","slug":"comtech-to-protest-blue-force-tracking-2-contract-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/comtech-to-protest-blue-force-tracking-2-contract-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Comtech to Protest Blue Force Tracking-2 Contract Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

[07-23-10] Comtech<\/strong> CEO Fred Kornberg said his company plans to file an appeal with the U.S. Government Accountability Office <\/strong>over the U.S. Army<\/strong>\u2019s Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT-2) contract award to ViaSat<\/strong>, announced July 22. 
\n    \u201cGiven our proven performance during a war-time environment, the performance capability of our BFT-HC transceiver and our belief that Comtech offers a lower overall program risk to the U.S Army as well as other factors, we anticipate protesting the award given to the third party,\u201d Kornberg said in a statement.
\n    While Comtech has yet to announce details of the protest, Comtech\u2019s Blue Force Tracking Program Manager Richard Leach told Satellite News that the Army informed the company that it considered its solution to be cost-effective during an interview conducted July 21. \u201cWe have been told that it would be more cost-effective to go with us as the incumbent since our BFT-2 system, BFT-HC, is compatible with legacy systems,\u201d said Leach.
\n    ViaSat was awarded $477 million under the BFT-2 indefinite-delivery, indefinite contract and received the first delivery order for $37.7 million to fund deliveries of first article and initial production terminals and other ground networking equipment. ViaSat\u2019s BFT-2 system is derived from its ArcLight mobile satcom technology, which uses VSAT antennas to provide broadband communications-on-the-move voice, video and services. Comtech, the proprietary owner of the BFT waveform, offered the Army its BFT-HC terminal, which is compatible with BFT legacy systems. Comtech\u2019s said it was notified by the Army that it was not selected as the program manager and vendor and that an award was made to ViaSat based on a total evaluated price of $249.9 million \u2014 about 50 percent lower than the total evaluated price of Comtech\u2019s BFT-2 proposal.
\n    The Army\u2019s decision surprised Raymond James<\/strong> analyst Chris Quilty, who told Satellite News July 21 that he was \u201c98 percent sure\u201d Comtech would win the award based on the Army\u2019s frequent BFT and MTS contract ceiling increases with the company. After the contract award was announced, Quilty told Satellite News that he could not explain the difference between Comtech\u2019s and ViaSat\u2019s statements. \u201cObviously, investors see this development as a shock. I am still trying to determine the difference between the two numbers. The $249.9 million figure, stated by Comtech, implies that the BFT-2 program will spend an average of approximately $41.7 million per year on BFT-2 services and hardware based on a six-year anticipated rollout.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Update: In a July 27 interview with Satellite News, ViaSat clarified that the $250 million figure, cited by Comtech, was an accurate reflection of ViaSat\u2019s BFT-2 bid and that the $477 million figure represents the Army\u2019s contract ceiling after comparing the bids and adding up evaluated quantities under a pyramid approach)<\/em><\/p>\n

    During a July 21 interview, Quilty told Satellite News that he had been convinced for the past two years that Comtech would be the sole-sourced BFT-2 winner due to the Army\u2019s current network structure and the demand for Comtech\u2019s products. \u201cThe fact is that Comtech, with its current Army contract vehicles, is the incumbent for BFT-2. Comtech is the sole owner of the BFT-1 waveform and the incremental cost involved with switching over to ViaSat\u2019s ArcLight technology is too great. With two wars going on and 100,000 vehicles dependent on this, shifting from one network to another stovetop network is too risky. You don\u2019t want two sets of hardware and two sets of networks.\u201d
\n    Quilty also believed that the Army would not have increased its MTS ceiling with Comtech so drastically if it was not planning to go with the company\u2019s BFT-2 solution. \u201cMTS was the Army\u2019s original tracking solution and now BFT is pulling the weight. Would the Army have increased its MTS ceiling by $270 million if they weren\u2019t considering Comtech for BFT-2? I don\u2019t think so. The contract ceiling increase would have been $50 million if that were the case. This was a \u2018wink-wink\u2019 from the Army. When I saw this develop, I went from being 95 percent sure that Comtech was going to win this to being 98 percent sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[07-23-10] Comtech CEO Fred Kornberg said his company plans to file an appeal with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the U.S. Army\u2019s Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT-2) contract award to ViaSat, announced July 22.      \u201cGiven our proven performance during a war-time environment, the performance capability of our BFT-HC transceiver and our belief that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}