The Small Business Set-Aside Bought the Incumbent a Bridge
The Air Force posted a sole-source justification today for Medusa counter-drone engineering work. Its own text says the delay that made competition impossible came from deciding to set the follow-on aside for small business, and from the FAR overhaul. Leidos keeps the work either way.
At 12:18 this afternoon, the Force Protection Division at Hanscom posted a six-page justification explaining why it could not compete a contract it had been working to compete since November.
The work is engineering, integration, and software development on Medusa, the command-and-control backbone the Air Force runs its counter-drone systems through. The incumbent is Leidos.
The predecessor contract expired on September 29. The bridge that replaced it was awarded sole source on September 25, four days earlier (chart below).
So far this is an ordinary bridge, and there are hundreds of them. What makes this one worth your evening is the reason the document gives for its own existence.
"Updated market research led to a final determination to transition the follow-on Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to a small business set-aside."
That sentence is the agency explaining, in its own J&A, that the decision to reserve the follow-on for small business is part of the chain that ended in a sole source to a large incumbent.
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