Lightning gun maker Applied Energetics recently lost a $3 million contract. The reason? The Marine Corps decided the company’s device, which is meant to zap improvised bombs, just isn’t what they needed.

Marine Corps Systems Command confirmed yesterday that it had canceled a contract with Applied Energetics, as I report today in an article for the Center for Public Integrity. Ironically, this news came the same day that the company (formerly known as Ionatron) held a conference call with investors, which didn’t mention the loss of the contract.

Instead, Applied Energetics president Joe Hayden said the military was still evaluating the device.

Applied Energetics has had a tough time in recent years: They’ve been sued by shareholders, the Pentagon’s bomb-making agency stopped funding them, and their wonder tech has ended up on an eBay fire sale. The loss of the Marine Corps contract is yet another blow for the company, which has taken in over $50 million in government funding.

A series of e-mail exchanges with a spokesman for the company did not help shed light on the situation, but rather focused on the semantic difference of whether the contract had been canceled or not. “The Marine Corps did not Terminate for Convenience,” the spokesman wrote.  “A Termination for Convenience comes before a contract is complete or fulfilled which did not occur.”

The Marine Corps’ explanation is clear, however. “We initiated a sole-source contract under urgent and compelling circumstances, negotiated a price and asked the vendor to take as much risk as possible in obtaining long-lead time components,” Jim Katzaman, a spokesman for Marine Corps Systems Command, wrote in an e-mail. “On the day the contract was ready for approval and signature, the commander in the field canceled the requirement.”

The government cut a $187,000 check to Applied Energetics for canceling the contract.

Image: USMC