Earlier this week, 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 is 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 asserts 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.
Both Nightforce and SIG will have to pay a license fee to include that reticle in the scopes the government will purchase, even though Nightforce shares an owner with Tremor8 creator Horus.
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.
The additional cost of the integration of the Tremor8 into the SIG TANGO6T is what Leupold is protesting. Did the government violate its own requirement when it selected the SIG optic as submitted, or did the government select a product based on its own requirement and then direct the vendor to make changes which were costly? That is the heart of the question at hand. GAO will investigate the matter and make a determination. Possible outcomes are the status quo, a new solicitation, no procurement at all, or SIG being paid for at least a portion of the contract and a new solicitation being issued.
Read the redacted protest letter
here.
