A U.S. regulator came in agreement with concerns raised by Jeff Bezos’ space company that has challenged the procedure adopted by the Pentagon for procurement of military space launch facility, a backing got by the Amazon billionaire who has many of the difference of opinion with the major agency’s procurement programs.
On Monday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) uphold the stance of Blue Origin on a bid protest which was in argument that the decision of picking up of just two out of four competing rocket companies by Air Force to launch next series of defense satellites for next five years is a wrong step.
Amazon.com Inc of Bezos also came in disagreement with Pentagon in its recent award of $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp as it claimed that contracting process was not carried out in a fair way due to the political influence which spoiled the contracting process.
Bezos founded the Blue Origin in 2000 and in August this year, the firm lodged its complaint against the Air Force program alleging it to be having many flaws which prevented the offering companies from smartly presenting their proposals and suppressed the fair competition by keeping the non-selected companies off for 5 years.
For the program called Launch Service Procurement (LSP) Phase 2, total value of the contract has not been disclosed but it is likely to be of worth billions of dollars for two selected companies for carrying out the assignments of launching next 34 defense satellites of Pentagon from 2022 to 2027.
On Monday, the GAO said that the criteria of awarding the contract by Air Force are not consistent with the procurement rules and regulations in force and recommended the agency to make appropriate changes to its rules.
The Air Force said that it is not in plans of revising the terms and conditions of its LSP solicitation because of the protest and is in believes that the procedure adopted in the process was the best for national security and was an open competition.
