DynCorp prevails in fights for $3.5B in Army contracts

DynCorp International has cleared three protests to secure a pair of Army aviation support contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion.

The company won both the Army Aviation Field Maintenance West and Aviation Field Maintenance East contracts. The West contract has a ceiling of $1.1 billion, while East has potential value of $2.4 billion. The Army uses the contracts to support a variety of aviation support duties including aircraft maintenance, logistics and support for training and exercises.

AECOM and PAE both protested the West contract award, while only AECOM protested the East contract.

Grounds of all the protests though were similar in that the companies claimed that the selection process didn’t follow the requirements in the solicitations.

The Government Accountability Office denied those allegations, which clears DynCorp to begin work under the contracts.

Both of those wins are important to DynCorp as it battles for a spot on the $82 billion Logistics Civil Augmentation V contract, or LOGCAP V. DynCorp missed the cut for that 15-year contract. GAO denied DynCorp's protest but the company has taken its complaints to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

AECOM also lost out on that contract but saw its protest dismissed just days away from a decision because DynCorp had gone to a higher court. The court asked GAO to submit an opinion on what its decision on AECOM's protest would have been. The GAO opinion will be made public at some point, as will the decision to deny DynCorp’s protest.

For now, those decisions remain tangled up with the proceedings at the Court of Federal Claims.

The LOGCAP program is a huge deal for DynCorp as it accounts for 15 percent of its revenue. DynCorp was the incumbent for AFM West so keeping that contract was important. AFM East is a new contract for DynCorp. It formerly was held by a joint venture that included L3 and Vertex Aerospace, according to Deltek data.

In a recent investor presentation, DynCorp listed AFM West and AFM East among its highlights.