The Army is weighing changes in General Dynamics Corp.’s contract to maintain Stryker armored combat vehicles after the Pentagon’s inspector general found the terms led to excess spending of as much as $336 million, or 23 percent.
The no-bid contract resulted in “little, if any, cost risk for the contractor or incentive to control costs,” the inspector general said in an audit. The Army responded by starting a “business case analysis” of potential changes, according to Ashley Givens, spokeswoman for the service’s Ground Combat Systems.
Under contracts that began in 2002 and were awarded without competition, General Dynamics is paid to perform maintenance and to buy, store and issue spare parts for the Army’s 2,576 Stryker vehicles, which were built by the company.
The 19-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles have driven an estimated 40 million miles (64 million kilometers) during the Iraq and Afghan wars. Seventy-seven Strykers have been destroyed in battle since 2002, and 435 were damaged.
Since the first contract in May 2002, Army officials “have made no progress in converting the high-risk cost-reimbursable contract or portions to a preferred lower risk, firm-fixed contract,” the audit, dated June 18, found. “As a result, the Stryker contract was at a higher risk of misuse, waste and inadequate accountability.”
By: Brant
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