How the Air Force Broke Its Own Unique Source
Three consecutive ALE-47 dispenser production contracts at Robins come back from FPDS coded the same way: not competed, only one source, one offer received. The contract announced Friday is a $147,310,777 competitive award with two offers, and eighteen dated updates on one SAM.gov notice say exactly what changed.
Pull every AN/ALE-47 dispenser production contract Robins has signed since 2012 and the federal procurement record returns the same fields on all of them. Not competed. Only one source. One offer received.
Friday's board carried the fourth one, and it reads differently.
Symetrics Industries LLC, doing business as Extant Aerospace, took a maximum $147,310,777 indefinite-delivery contract for line replaceable unit and shop replaceable unit production. The announcement says the acquisition was competitive and that two offers were received.
Same company. Same office. Same part numbers.
"What has to change before a program office stops writing 'only one source' on hardware it has been buying for three decades?"
The answer sits in eighteen dated updates on a single SAM.gov notice, and one of them is doing all the work.
Three Contracts, One Offer Each
The ordering from October 2012 through June 2024 runs across three vehicles at AFLCMC/WNKD, all of them held by Symetrics.
- FA8523-13-D-0001, a requirements contract signed Oct. 19, 2012: 16 delivery orders, $18,116,756 obligated.
- FA8523-16-D-0002, signed Dec. 28, 2015: 23 orders, $46,945,987.
- FA8523-21-D-0008, signed June 25, 2021 off sources-sought notice FA8523-20-R-0047: 13 orders, $40,456,201.
Every one of them carries an identical competition record in FPDS.
Extent competed, not competed. Solicitation procedures, only one source. Reason not competed, unique source under FAR 6.302-1(b)(1). Offers received, one.
Fifty-two delivery orders, $105,518,944 obligated, and no competitor anywhere in the file (chart below).
The arrangement was not always that way, and Symetrics is the reason we know it.
In August 1997 GAO sustained B-274246.3, its protest of the Air Force award to Tracor covering Lots IV through VII of this same system under RFP F33657-96-R-0001. In October 2006 GAO denied B-298759, its challenge to the rejection of a late final proposal revision on RFP FA8523-06-R-80414.
Both were competitions. Then the docket goes quiet for eighteen years and the sole-source run begins.
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