Voluntary Transparency Notice - Integration of the Apache AH-64E Defensive Aid Systems

The Apache Project Team, part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to award a framework agreement to Leonardo MW Ltd for the design, qualification, integration and delivery of an integrated Defensive Aid System ("DAS"), which is a critical sub-system on the Apache helicopter. The duration of the contract will be two years commencing in July 2020.

The contract value is anticipated to be £3.2M (GBP). This is a correction to the value which was previously outlined in VEAT notice 2019/S 144-355872 as being £1M (GBP).

It is considered that a contract may be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to Article 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC (Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the UK Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011) because competition is absent for technical reasons. This is because in order to fulfil this requirement the contract will involve the integration of existing Helicopter Integrated Defensive Aids System ("HIDAS") items and Leonardo MW Ltd are the Design Organisation ("DO") for these subsystems.

They hold specific technical know-how as well as owning all the supporting technical information including software, interface control documents, drawings and designs and test schemes which prevents any other supplier from carrying out the required support. Therefore, it is considered that only Leonardo MW Ltd can provide the service(s) required.