The Air Force is paying for engine maintenance for the C-17 Globemaster III without any idea if it’s getting a fair price, a new watchdog report said.
“Air Force officials awarded the…base contract without obtaining sufficient data to determine whether the Air Force purchased the F117 engine sustainment services provided by Pratt & Whitney at fair and reasonable prices,” said the investigation by the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General.
The exact amount the Air Force paid for the sole-source contract between fiscal 2012 and 2014 is redacted, but the IG’s report says that it’s in the billions.
The F117 engine is a military version of the Pratt & Whitney PW2000 engine used to power Boeing 757 aircraft. The Air Force currently has 1,200 of the engines for 222 C-17s, the IG said. Each plane flies on four of the engines.
Investigators said the Air Force didn’t do its due diligence before handing the defense contractor money for the Globemaster III Integrated Sustainment Program (GISP).
“Pratt & Whitney declined to provide critical cost and pricing information that the Air Force needed to determine fair and reasonable prices,” the IG’s report said. “Without sufficient supporting information, the Air Force relied on a questionable analysis of Pratt & Whitney’s proposed F117 engine sustainment prices and declared the GISP contract prices fair and reasonable.”
What sort of “questionable analysis” the Air Force did is redacted in the report, but the IG said this isn’t a new problem.
“For over 10 years, the Air Force has been ineffective at obtaining insight into its F117 engine sustainment requirements and prices,” the report said.
In a letter dated Nov. 2015, then-acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, Richard Lombardi, responded to the report, but what actions he said he would take are redacted.
The IG’s office responded that his statements “did not address the specifics of the recommendation,” and that the Air Force still needed to establish a “performance and cost baseline for the F117 engine sustainment.”
The original contract was structured to encourage Pratt & Whitney to cut down on maintenance hours and expenses, but investigators said Air Force contracting officials never re-evaluated the agreement to see if the cost could be reduced.
Sole-source contracting comes with a risk that “the contractor could overcharge the government in the absence of competition,” the IG said. In that case, collecting cost data from the contractor, evaluating it, and comparing it to other companies becomes even more important, investigators said.
But he defense contractor still has not provided a complete accounting of the costs of engine maintenance, the IG said.
In an earlier audit, investigators “requested data related to sustainment services…however, Pratt & Whitney did not provide requested cost data” due to concerns that the Air Force would use it in pending contract negotiations.
Inspectors ended up subpoenaing the company for the information, and said in the report that they “have received multiple installments of portions of the requested F117 engine sustainment information.” The IG said they’ll publish another report once they’ve finished analyzing all the cost data.
Air Force Times has reached out to Pratt & Whitney, the Air Force Contracting office, and the Inspector General, and will update this report as more information becomes available.
The C-17 Globemaster III is a cargo and personnel transport that can carry 102 troops or 170,900 lbs. of cargo, according to Air Force fact sheets. It first entered service in 1993.
The F117 listed in the report is the designation of the engine produced by Pratt & Whitney, and should not be confused with the F-117 Nighthawk, the Air Force’s first dedicated stealth fighter that was retired in 2008.
Source: http://www.defensenews.com/story/milita ... /81767036/
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