How One Justification Buys Five Years of Orders

Friday's Pentagon board carried two Naval Air Systems Command awards worth $170,826,949 between them, and almost the same sentence at the bottom of each.

"This order was not competitively procured." "This contract was not competitively procured."

Same office at Patuxent River, same prime in two corporate forms, two days running.

"Both are sole source. So why does only one of them owe you a document every time it buys something?"

The answer is the instrument, and it decides how much of either program you will ever get to see.

Two Sole Sources, Two Different Papers

The first one is an order. Bell Boeing Joint Project Office took $90,826,949 cost-plus-incentive-fee on N0001927F1025 for the continued redesign of the V-22 flight control system: replacement flight control computers, cockpit interface units and test equipment for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and FMS customers, through October 2030.

Only $4,869,250 was obligated at award.

It rides basic ordering agreement N0001922G0002, and FAR 16.703(a) is blunt about what that is: A basic ordering agreement is not a contract.

So each order under it stands alone. FAR 16.703(d)(1) tells the contracting officer to obtain competition in accordance with part 6 before issuing one, and to sign or obtain the applicable justifications "as if the order were a contract awarded independently of a basic ordering agreement."

The second one is a contract. Boeing in St. Louis took a not-to-exceed $80,000,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-no-fee IDIQ, N0001927D1006, for MQ-25A system improvements, configuration development, integration, production readiness and sustainment, through October 2031. The board's own words on the money: "No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued."

A ceiling, a scope, and nothing in it yet.