How an End-of-Life Part Grows an Incumbent's Contract

"Who else can sustain a network the Government holds no technical data for?"

USSOCOM's Technology Applications Contracting Office put that question to the market at 7:06 a.m. Eastern on Friday and gave the market until noon on Monday to answer.

Seventy-seven hours. Two of them business days.

The notice is H9224126SSN0011, a sources-sought with no set-aside, place of performance Fort Eustis. Its title names the incumbent before the requirement: "Collins Aerospace Life Cycle Contractor Support Service (LCCS) for Tactical Mission Networking (TMN) program."

And it tells you what it is for, which most market research declines to do:

"This is NOT a Request for Proposal (RFP). It is a market research tool being used to determine if a competitive acquisition is viable before finalizing Justification and Approval (J&A) amendment for a sole-source contract modification."

So the J&A already exists in draft. The notice is the paperwork step before it gets signed.

The Contract Underneath

H9224123D0011, Rockwell Collins, Inc. Single-award, firm-fixed-price IDIQ, signed July 27, 2023, effective that August 1, last date to order July 31, 2028.

Solicitation H9224123R0002. Offers received: one. Extent competed: not competed.

FPDS codes the reason as a follow-on under 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii/iii), the prong that lets a DoD agency keep highly specialized services with the original source when moving would duplicate cost or blow the schedule.

Current ceiling, after four priced modifications: $62,088,134.76.

Against that, ten orders and $38,916,505.64 obligated through the last action the record carries, which is 62.7% of the ceiling at 63.1% of the ordering period (chart below).

A contract running that close to its own plan is not a contract about to run out of money.