Bottom Line Up Front: The Government Accounting Officer has sustained Leupold & Stevens’ protest against the U.S. Department of the Navy Surface Warfare Center Crane Division’s recent contract modification for Miniature Aiming Systems-Day Squad-Variable Power Scopes (Second Focal Plane).
Leupold has “won” but they didn’t get anything tangible from the protest. Unlike many other protests, they won’t be awarded anything. It’s more a moral victory.
On the other hand, Crane won’t be able to pay SIG SAUER for changes to the optics they’ve directed.
Other than withdrawing the contract modification, Crane has not announced a course of action to correct the situation. Possible outcomes are to purchase the optics with a different reticle, a new solicitation, no procurement at all, a new solicitation being issued. Alternatively, SIG may decide you eat the cost of the government directed changes.
Background
In August, optics manufacturer Leupold & Stevens submitted a GAO protest of the U.S. Department of the Navy Surface Warfare Center Crane Division’s recent contract modification published on 18 July 2019, to the internal reticle under Solicitation No. N00164-18-R-JQ30 (“the Solicitation”) and Contract No. N00164-18-D-JQ30 (“the Contract”) for Miniature Aiming Systems-Day Squad-Variable Power Scopes (Second Focal Plane) to Sig Sauer, Inc. For this solicitation, Crane was working on behalf of United States Special Operations Command as their office of primary responsibility for lethality. SOF weapons and accessories as well as Visual Augmentation Systems are procured by Crane.
Leupold asserted that Crane improperly modified its contract with Sig Sauer and that the changes made to the contract were so substantial that the contract should be terminated and a new competition conducted for the modified requirements. The additional funding of the contract modification is so much when added to SIG’s winning bid that Leupold feels someone else would have been awarded the contract instead of SIG.
While the SIG Optics TANGO6T is at the heart of this action, it’s important to point out that the protest has nothing to do with performance. That hasn’t even been actually assessed yet as neither SIG nor Nightforce have delivered any production samples to the government. This is because USSOCOM decided to integrate a new reticle into S-VPS, the Tremor8.
When the program was created, a different reticle had initially been considered, but due to the adoption of 6.5 Creedmoor, SOCOM decided they wanted a bullet drop compensator reticle. Todd Hodnett had envisioned a new Tremor reticle and this was adopted, but in concept only. The reticle was sketched out on a napkin and included settings for 5.56 M855A1 as well as the new 6.5 CM round. Even when the optics had been selected and contracts awarded, the Tremor8 still did not exist. Just recently, months later, the reticle has finally been certified. Now that it has been certified, Nightforce and SIG can integrate the reticle into their scopes and deliver samples to the government for acceptance testing.
In fact, Nightforce has already provided first production samples and they’ve passed Destructive Testing at Crane. They’ve completed the New Equipment Training and Operational Testing earlier this month and should have the Fielding & Deployment Release by early November.
SIG’s winning submission to S-VPS (SFP) incorporated a proprietary wire reticle. While this was selected, SOCOM later decided they wanted an etched, illuminated Tremor8 reticle. Naturally, this increased cost and the government paying for the additional cost of the integration of the Tremor8 into the SIG TANGO6T is what Leupold protested.
