$230.5M in Contracts to Keep P-3 Fleet Flying
Related Stories: Air Reconnaissance, Americas - USA, Contracts - Awards, L3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Naval Equipment, Specialty Aircraft, Support & Maintenance, UAVs
flying in formation
In an earlier DID article, we noted the extra effort required to preserve the USA’s P-3C Orion maritime surveillance & patrol aircraft in light of airframes that were wearing out, coupled with increased demand for the plane that includes overland operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan and even weapons upgrades. Its 737-based successor the P-8A MMA, which DID has also covered, will not begin to enter service until 2010 at the earliest, and UAV supplementation via a Maritime version of Global Hawk or a successor system like the BAMS is still at least a couple of years away.
In line with these efforts to preserve and upgrade the USA’s shrinking P-3C fleet, the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD has recently issued three contracts worth a total of $230.5 million.
Two of the contracts are firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contracts for phased depot maintenance, special structural inspections and kits, enhanced special structural inspections, special structural inspections, and modification and installation programs for P-3 and EP-3 aircraft. This contract was competitively procured under an electronic request for proposals, and two offers were received. Both were accepted, with the contract value apportioned unequally between the two respondents.
Lockheed Martin Aircraft and Logistics Centers in Greenville, SC received a $121.4 million contract (N00019-05-D-0013). Work will be performed in Greenville, SC and is expected to be complete in June 2006.
L-3 Communications Integrated Systems in Greenville, TX received a $104.2 million contract (N00019-05-D-0008). Work will be performed in Greenville, TX, and is expected to be complete in June 2006. L-3 recently acquired Titan Corp. in a multi-billion merger deal, and a subsidiary recently made headlines for less appealing reasons when it fell under criminal investigation in the CESL emergency radio scandal.
In addition, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Marietta, GA received a $5 million ceiling-priced indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, time and material contract for engineering and logistic services in response to obsolescence issues and operational and/or technical problems arising from P-3 type/model/series fleet usage for the Navy, Foreign Military Sales Program customers and other government agencies.
This contract includes design engineering investigations, reliability, maintainability and human factors analysis, engineering change proposal feasibility studies, support for failure, incident and accident investigations, and Integrated Logistics Support. Work will be performed in Marietta, GA and is also expected to be completed in June 2006. This contract was not competitively procured (N00019-05-D-0005).
