Airtronic Takes Over Contract for 14 million M9 Pistol Magazines, Offers Sand Solutions

Enter sand, man?(click to view full) TACOM Rock Island Arsenal has awarded five-year indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract W52H09-05-D-0328 to Airtronic Services, Inc. in Elk Grove Village, IL for the production of Beretta M9 Pistol Magazines. The contract requires Airtronic to initially produce 900,000 magazines for $4,059,000. The maximum number of magazine to be produced is 14 million units at $63 million. Airtronic noted that the previous vendor, Checkmate, had charged $8.51 each. Defense Review has a fine investigation and review of the M9 pistol’s various reported problems and controversies over the years, and their note re: the past performance of pistol magazines in Iraq and Afghanistan provides valuable food for thought that Airtronic is addressing. But TACOM’s award did not remain uncontested… PHT Corporation filed a bid protest with the US Government Accountability Office, maintaining that the agency improperly evaluated the past performance record of Airtronic, and that Airtronic’s price was unreasonably low. In decision file B-297313, the GAO denied the bid protest: “Where solicitation defined relevant past performance as performance on contracts with a value over $500,000 that demonstrates the successful manufacture of M9 magazine cartridge or similar item, award to offeror with no relevant past performance was reasonable where […]