Lockheed Satellite Contract is Protested by Boeing

We wrote a few weeks ago of Lockheed being awarded a contract to build the next generation weather satellite. Now Bloomberg reports that Boeing has protested the award. Since the number of companies able do this work in the U.S. is limited each contract is very important. The protest was filed with the GAO which is the second level of protest. The first is with the service awarding the contract, and the last is to actually go to Federal court. Work will stop on the Lockheed contract while the GAO decides. In the past protests were rarely won, but in the last few years there have been several contract awards overturned. Most recently the Air Force had awards to Boeing and Northrop Grumman overturned and the source selection restarted.