The U.S. Air Force's reaction to the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) decision to sustain the second round of protests against the service's combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) contract award could decide how future Air Force acquisition programs fare with federal lawmakers, analysts say.

GAO sustained the protests by Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky Aircraft lodged against the Air Force contract award to Boeing worth between $10 billion and $15 billion to build more than 140 CSAR-X helicopters (DAILY, Aug. 31).

According to James McAleese of McAleese and Associates, in the award of all controversial high dollar-value contracts the services must guard against the potential public perception of undue influence or bias toward specific contractors; a systemic pattern of disregarding formal evaluation factors during the final award decision; and concerns over transparency and responsiveness to Congressional direction.

"This is particularly important with regard to the USAF, because USAF has several large-dollar-value procurements in the queue," that have the potential for both legal protest and Congressional controversy, McAleese said.

In the second protest, Lockheed and Sikorsky said the Air Force was refusing to consider the effects that certain lifecycle costs concerns sustained in the first protest would have on other parts of the revised bids. GAO agreed those costs should be considered.

"It is fundamental that, where an agency revises the criteria against which offers are to be evaluated or otherwise materially changes the solicitation's evaluation scheme, offerors must be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to the revised criteria or evaluation scheme," GAO said with the release of its decision.

"We recommend that the Air Force permit offerors to revise both the cost/price and non-cost/price aspects of their proposals," GAO said. "We recognize that this represents a significant change in the Air Force's intended conduct of this procurement ... and that the result could delay the acquisition. Nonetheless, in view of the fact that the record shows that the Air Force's change to its evaluation methodology could have affected the manner in which offerors prepared their proposals well beyond the O&S [operations and support] cost calculation, offerors should have the opportunity to revise their proposals in response."

Just how much of an effect GAO's decision could have on the program and the Air Force became apparent with the following statement by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on AirLand Forces: "The AirLand Subcommittee is concerned that the Air Force procures the best possible helicopter for the search and rescue mission. Two protests upheld by GAO is very unusual. This should be a strong signal that a serious re-examination of the entire procurement process is needed."

Sue Payton, assistant Secretary of the Air Force, said, "We are committed to providing an urgently needed capability, but we are equally dedicated to properly conducting our evaluations of offeror's proposals."