Army Encounters More Delays In Deploying Combat Vehicle.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: Investigation into awarding of contract

The U.S. Army has suffered another setback in its drive to produce a new generation of light armored vehicles as part of the service's effort to transform itself into a more agile, deployable force.

In November, the Army awarded a $4 billion, six-year contract to produce its planned Interim Armored Vehicle (IAV) to a team of contractors headed by the GM GDLS Defense Group--a joint venture between General Motors Defense, of London, Ontario, and General Dynamics Land Systems, of Sterling Heights, Mich. The platform selected was GM's Light Armored Vehicle, Generation III (LAV III).

Almost immediately after the contract was awarded, however, one of the companies that lost the bid--United Defense LP, of Arlington, Va.--filed a formal protest.

In the complaint, United Defense representatives said that they had offered to provide a less expensive vehicle, more quickly and that the Army had ignored the requirements that it set out for contractors. "We offered a solution that did everything the Army said it wanted done, and at half of the price that they agreed to pay," said Douglas Coffey, vice president for communications at United Defense.

After the protest, the Army did what is required under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984: It suspended the contract, pending a review by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

GAO, an investigative arm of Congress, must consider whether the Army had complied with the law in making the award, according to John Melody, assistant general counsel for procurement law. The review could take 100 days or slightly longer to complete, he said.

During that process, "several different things can happen," Melody said. Among them:

* Protests can be dropped before a conclusion is reached.

* Specific complaints can be addressed by the contracting agency.

* GAO can order an agency to reopen the contract for bids.

For the time being, the Army has issued a stop-work order on the contract.

"We can continue to plan," said Peter Keating, a spokesman for General Dynamics. "But no direct work on the contract can rake place until the protest is resolved."

The protest is merely the latest in a series of delays to hound development of the IAV. In the 2001 Defense Authorization Act, Congress required the Army to conduct "side-by-side" comparison tests between the platform selected as the IAV and the medium-weight combat vehicles currently in use by the service.

An estimated 46 percent of the U.S. combat-vehicle fleet consists of the four-decade-old M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier, made by United Defense.

The comparison tests will be conducted by the Army, but monitored by the Defense Department's director of test and evaluation, Philip E. Coyle III. They "will take years" to complete...