Sole Source Award to Hughes Aircraft Company To Repair Equipment Aboard U.S.S. Kitty Hawk

In response to congressional requests, the award of a Navy sole-source contract to a company to repair tactical data system equipment aboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk was reviewed.

As a result, it was recommended that the Navy solicit competition to the maximum practicable extent from all potential government and commercial sources for repair projects in excess of the Navy's need for in-house maintenance capability. The Navy determined the company should be retained as the sole commercial source of the repair work for the following reasons: the company is the developer, sole manufacturer, and major source of supply of the equipment; only the developer-manufacturer can accomodate the continually changing nature of the equipment; it is not economically practicable to update the technical data packages; fair and reasonable prices can be negotiated with the company; stocked repair and replacement parts will be standardized; and approximately 3 years would be required before any commercial source, other than the company, could begin work. Still unresolved is the question of whether it is in the best interest of the government to have the repair work performed on a noncompetitive basis.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: No director on record Team: No team on record Phone: No phone on record