Desert Storm.

The article discusses Defense Department contracting. he Army has racked up $300 million in sand damage repair bills on 400 UH-60 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters used in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's a serious problem, but there is a solution: air filters, offered by several companies. The California Highway Patrol installed them in 2002 and found some helicopter engines ran for 2,000 hours, up from 800, before needing an overhaul. Engineers at the U.S. Army's Aviation & Missile Command started planning in 1998 for a major purchase of filters. Then last November it suddenly authorized a sole source contract for 240 filter kits for Black Hawks used in Iraq to a Sikorsky subcontractor, the Aerospace Filtration Systems unit of Westar Aerospace & Defense Group of St. Louis. Not surprisingly, in December 2003 a rival filter company, Filtration Development Corp. of Novato, Calif., sued the Army in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.