GD protests Navy award

General Dynamics Corp. has filed a protest with the General Accounting Office over the awarding of the Navy's DD(X) contract to a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co.

The Northrop-Raytheon team, known as the Gold Team, won the four-year, $2.9 billion contract April 29 to develop the Navy's next-generation surface combat ships. The ships will rely heavily on communications and information technology to reduce crew sizes and increase effectiveness.

General Dynamics, known as the Blue Team, is claiming the Navy showed favoritism to the Northrop-Raytheon team. General Dynamics' teammates include Lockheed Martin Corp., United Defense Industries, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems and L-3 Corp.

General Dynamics is claiming the Navy allowed the Northrop-Raytheon team to use a ship's hull as a test bed, but denied General Dynamics the same hull. Also, information on a radar system built by Raytheon was not properly screened. Finally, the Navy double counted evaluation points on ship performance features of the Northrop-Raytheon bid, according to General Dynamics.