US defence contractor Martin Marietta Corp, Bethesda, Maryland, has filed a complaint against the US federal government over its huge contract contract awarded to Honeywell Federal Systems Inc in August (CI No 1,247), which once again seems set to provoke a bout of industry squabbling over government favoritism in the allocation of lucrative defence contracts. Honeywell is to supply up to 80,000 Apple Macintosh IIs running A/UX as part of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System Information System Workstation Segment programme. Federal Computer Weekly reports that the deal, worth $164m over the next five years, could top the $1,000m mark if all possible options were to be taken up. Martin Marietta, which claims to have tendered a cheaper package based on Sun Microsystems hardware filed its complaint with the General Accounting Office on September 5 the project is stamped as critical by the Department of Defense – and it was only the third time the company has made such a protest in 20 years of competing on defence contracts. Marietta’s subcontractors such as Informix, Claris and SecureWare appeared to be unaware that the complaint had been filed, Apple refused to comment. The fact that turning Macs into workstations can prove to be an expensive business is thought to be a pivotal feature in the complaint – in addition Honeywell is to turn to other vendors for the monitors, which are not included as part of the Apple deal. Government computer syst ems integrator C3 Inc, Reston, Virginia, which also put together a tender package for the contract based on Zenith Data Systems hardware is also reported to be considering a similar complaint.
