How a Sole Source Stopped Being 6.302

Twenty justification notices went up across the Department of Defense between Thursday morning and this morning.

Eleven are scans with no text layer, which is its own standing complaint. Nine can be read by a machine.

Not one of the nine says 6.302.

Six cite a renumbered paragraph: 6.103-1 where you would have read 6.302-1, 16.507-6 where you would have read 16.505(b)(2), plus 12.201-1 and 8.401 on the commercial and schedule side (chart above).

Two skip the regulation entirely and cite only 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(1). One has no competition authority anywhere in its readable text.

The old numbers are gone from the stack, and nobody sent a memo to your saved searches.

Three of the six put RFO in front of the paragraph. Two put FAR in front of a renumbered paragraph, which looks exactly like a citation you already know and points somewhere else.

One does both in a single sentence. Army's CARC justification for 215 Light Armored Vehicles: "41 U.S.C. §1901 as implemented by Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Overhaul (RFO) 12.201-1 and 10 U.S.C. §3204 as implemented by FAR 6.103-1(c)(2)(ii)."

Worth being precise about what this is. The overhaul is still proposed rules, with comments on the September batch closed October 19 and no final rule published.

What the contracting officer is operating under is a class deviation. DARS 2026-O0017 told DoD to use the revised Part 6 "in lieu of the text codified at 48 CFR chapter 1" effective February 1, 2026, and DARS 2026-O0045 did the same for Part 16 effective March 16, 2026.

So the number in the J&A is real, the rule is real, and the CFR still says something else.

Here is what the week put under those numbers.