Why Raise a Ceiling With Seventy Days Left to Order?
Thursday's board added $350,000,000 to Raytheon's Small Diameter Bomb II support IDIQ, a vehicle that stops taking orders on December 31. The follow-on has been sitting in SAM since July, it is sole source, and it asks alternative vendors to reverse engineer the guidance software. Plus two single-bid IDIQs from one Army office, a third DLA on-ramp, and the week's one new front door.
Wednesday's Pentagon board carried two ceiling increases.
Thursday's carried a third, and this one has a clock on it.
Raytheon took a $350,000,000 ceiling increase, modification P00014, on FA8672-19-D-0001, the sole-source IDIQ that carries life cycle support for Small Diameter Bomb II.
Total cumulative face value goes to $950,000,000 from $600,000,000, no funds obligated at award, completion expected Dec. 31, 2030.
The board stops there. The record does not.
The ceiling moved. The ordering window did not.
FPDS carries 17 actions on this contract, and every single one of them reports the same ceiling: $600,000,000, from the Sept. 30, 2019 award straight through P00013, signed July 15, 2026 (chart below).
The last date to order read Sept. 30, 2024 when the thing was signed.
Then P00010, signed July 26, 2024 and 66 days before that window would have shut, moved it to Dec. 31, 2026.
So Thursday's announcement puts 58.3% more ceiling on a vehicle with 70 days of ordering life left.
Read it as the last loading of a contract on its way out.
Orders placed before New Year's Eve can perform until 2030, which makes the ceiling the only thing deciding how much work the incumbent books on the way through the door.
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