Army backs off $586M supercomputer award to SAIC

Right now, Raytheon Co. and Analytical Services Inc. have gained the upper hand in a battle over a $586 million high-performance computing contract won by Science Applications International Corp.

SAIC took the contract from incumbent Lockheed Martin, but so far, Lockheed hasn’t joined the fray.

Instead, two other challengers have filed protests with the Government Accountability Office, and those protests have caused the Army Corps of Engineers to cancel its contract with SAIC.

The contract is known as the High Performance Computing Next Generation Technical Services, or HITS contract.

The agency has agreed to look into some issues involving SAIC’s eligibility to compete for the contract. What that means isn’t clear to me, but I’m still looking into it.

The Corps also will conduct new discussions with bidders and make a new award decision.

SAIC very well could win again, but this at least gives Raytheon and Analytical Services a second shot.

UPDATE: Lockheed got back to me and they said they are back in the race for this contract. "We’re excited about the opportunity to extend our 11-year partnership with the DOD’s High Performance Computer Modernization Program," a spokesman told me.

So it looks like all three will be fighting it out once again.

The contract is a nice get for any of the bidders as it supports five large supercomputer centers and several smaller ones. Work at these centers include simulating battlefields to evaluate weapons and sensor systems, modeling work to create databases to help detect enemy submarines, and work on fluid dynamics, astrophysics, structural mechanics and signal and image processing.

The centers are used by the Army, Air Force, Navy and Defense Department.