Lon May 18, 2022 Lone Star Future Weapons filed a protest of SIG SAUER’s Next Generation Squad Weapon Contract award.
So far there are no details on the basis of the protest but it has caused an immediate stop work order on the program which has a very aggressive schedule.
Your team has always had a pretty good ear to the ground on this. Hear anything about this being substantial, or is it a desperate move by LS/TV who might not survive losing the contract?
I heard it was happening at SOFIC. No details so far.
I’m surprised it took this long for the lawsuit. With so much of this competition behind closed doors (requirements, data, results, soldier feedback etc) I doubt we will ever really know the full story. If there was malfeasance it needs to be properly investigated and legally delay with. If this is a corporate delay tactic then suit needs to be tossed out of court and production expedited.
A protest is not a lawsuit. It is ‘cry foul’ of the award (in this case the award to Sig) by another party who also participated in the RFP. Can be filed for a variety of reasons/accusations: s a claim that published test procedures weren’t followed; or that unpublished evaluation factors were taken into consideration, or that the winning bid didn’t meet the requirement any more than the losing bid, etc. Sometimes they backfire though, and detailed deficiencies of a losing bid can also surface.
Protests have to be filed within a certain amount of time post award in order to be considered for review. Basically the gov will have to open its books somewhat to more formally justify/explain the award to Sig over LS/TV
Whether it results in any action or further scrutiny of the award to Sig is TBD. I don’t know enough about the original tender or the selection methodology about this award to even want to speculate.
It honestly shouldn’t be at all unexpected that an award this big, with this much attention, was protested by the other contender. It’s somewhat pro forma.
I think what Seamus was commenting on was his surprise that it took this long for the protest to be unveiled, not that the protest was lodged at all. Given the size of the contract, I think he (and I) would’ve expected it to have come sooner. But maybe LS needed time to get their ducks in a row for this protest *shrug*
I’m just surprised they were able to protest an OTA.
I genuinely hope they get somewhere with this at least on the ammunition side where the wrong technology won full stop.
Contrary to what sig likes to tell people, you can run TV ammo to just as high or higher pressures and more importantly you don’t need to.
Also most importantly, sig’s ammo concept will always be eye bleed expensive while tv positions us to actually cut ammo costs.
A second part of why that’s the most important part is that from a strategic materials standpoint TV ammo can be produced in functionally unlimited quantities without hurting our worryingly finite strategic materials stocks
While TV ammo is sexy and lightweight, SIG ammo has way more room to grow. It can supports up to 120 PSI, and with future developments in powder, primers, etc. to match, it can supercharge existing calibers and platforms. Imagine a 16″ sniper rifle with similar performance as 24″ barrel gun.
Not to mention that TV weapon offering was lacking. A non-modular bullpup that no modern army will adopt in 2022, no belt fed, and little to no experience in actually making and delivering small arms on large scale. Meanwhile, SIG has delivered large mil contracts on scale, can deliver all components (guns, ammo, suppressors) fully in house, and offered strong weapons with the beefed up MCX SPEAR and the XM250.
You’re thinking too linearly. All the army had to do was adopt the Bullpup as the rifle offering, and the Sig machinegun as the MG offering.
And yes, that ammo can match long barrels – by burning out the gun and barrel sooner. And being the military – repairs won’t come on schedule. Sig’s ammo is heavier, it’s offering in the rifle category is heavier.
There isn’t much on paper objectively to compete against here – Sig was the crappiest offering.
The army clearly didn’t consider the ability to transport ammunition as well – lighter rounds with a larger caliber means our guys can offset the increase in weight and lose less. That’s a big deal. TV definitely should have taken it by that model alone.
No, they couldn’t have done that. The offerings were so different it was all in on one or the other submissions.
TV ammo is advertised to be interchangeable with current munitions, and change in caliber from 7.62 to 6.8 only requires a barrel change. They definitely can go with the bullpup rifle and the SIG SAW
Then the Army doesn’t get the velocity the want. So no, they can’t.
clownshoes
JV legal team coerced a JV managment team to self immolate.
Bullpups are a safety, ergonomic, and hence operational disaster. Hence 0% of SOF units, even when GPF was issued a bullpup.. UK, AUS, etc… , used them.
What percentile of users can that non-adjutsable bullpoop accomodate?
I was surprised to see True Velocity / LSW with a big booth at SOFIC. This explains a lot. I am hearing they took in a ton of cash from investors and it shows. Big booths at the trade events, custom wrapped F250 trucks, fancy custom trailers, big parties. Now they are going to the lawyers.
Sounds to me like a bunch of people have a lot of financial reasons to drag this out as long as possible.
They’ve still got Lightweight Medium Machine Gun ahead of them and SOCOM will start looking at alternative cartridge solutions in 2024.
They didn’t say a thing about their protest when I visited with them.
Another possibility is they are attempting in some way to say their cartridge manufacturing method is superior to SIGs as well as the cartridge it self. The SIG cartridge pressures and complexity is still challanging to understand.
That cartridge has already been demonstrated that it can be applied to other platforms and is thus is a technically superior solution.
Wish they put more effect into the LWMMG.
I think the NGSW made a mistake in not selecting the cartridge first.
I also think specifying a capability greater then the 7.62mm NATO was
also a mistake. This lead Sig to select the ridiculous 6.8x51mm Sig cartridge. A cartridge with a capability roughly equivalent to the 6mm ARC would have been ideal, instead a complex, expensive cartridge case was chosen to fire the chosen 6.8mm bullet out of a short barrel at crazy muzzle velocities.
The positives of the program is that True Velocity developed and proved an excellent semi-composite cartridge. Sig also produced an excellent LMG.
I know it won’t happen, but imagine if a 6.2mm/.243 bullet was adopted and fired from an optimized True Velocity semi-composite cartridge. An optimized Sig MCX Virtus and the M250 was optimized to fire the same cartridge would be adopted. That would revolutionary for the US military, doing something that made sense. The 6.8x51mm True Velocity cartridge could also be adopted to replace the 7.62mm in M240s and other support weapons as required. Imagine that, Sig wins, True Velocity wins, but most of all the soldiers win!
Guys who come up with these “select both companies” aren’t familiar with the requirement.