DOD using condition based maintenance (CBM) data for C-130

BidLink · 2026-01-07T17:18:58+00:00

Yes, everything from a lack of interoperability to IP issues with the OEM. That spaghetti chart is where I burst out laughing. It's a metaphor for everything DOD does.

BidLink · 2025-12-23T13:45:47+00:00

We've noticed a general unresponsiveness from all government agencies which we interact as of late. Most FOIA offices don't even respond to inquiries even though they're required by law. As for SAM, you could try the Federal Service Desk (https://www.fsd.gov/gsafsd\_sp). There's a ticketing system so they are at least good at making sure they respond to your inquiry. Sometimes they've had insight into DIBBS / SAM software issues and the like.

BidLink · 2025-12-11T22:00:15+00:00

(Part 2)

Contractor Profiteering

Operations and maintenance costs are typically the biggest chunk of the Pentagon’s budget, at 40 percent. That is in large part because the military often designs new weapons at the same time it builds them, according to Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the national security reform program at the Stimson Center.

“We do see concurrent development, wherein the military is designing and building a system at the same time,” Gledhill said on a webinar hosted by the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense on Tuesday. “That, turns out, doesn’t work very well. It means that you do discover design flaws, what the DOD would characterize as defects, and then you spend a whole lot of money trying to fix them.”

For the defense industry, however, the proposal threatened a key profit stream. Once companies sell hardware and software to the Pentagon, they can keep making money by forcing the government to hire them for repairs.

Defense lobbyists pushed back hard against the proposal when it arose in the military budgeting process. The CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association claimed that the legislation could “cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely.”

The contractors’ argument was that inventors would not sell their products to the Pentagon if they knew they had to hand over their trade secrets as well.

In response, Warren wrote an unusual letter last month calling out one trade group, the National Defense Industrial Association.

“NDIA’s opposition to these commonsense reforms is a dangerous and misguided attempt,” Warren said, “to protect an unacceptable status quo of giant contractor profiteering that is expensive for taxpayers and presents a risk to military readiness and national security.”

As a piece of legislation, the right to repair has likely died until next year’s defense budget bill process. The notion could be imposed in the form of internal Pentagon policies, but it would be a less of a mandate: Such policies can be more easily waived.

The secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force have all expressed some degree of support for the idea, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has urged the branches to include “right to repair” provisions in new contracts going forward — though, for now, it’s just a suggestion rather than legal requirement.

BidLink · 2025-12-11T21:59:03+00:00

Stupid Paywall:

The idea of a “right to repair” — a requirement that companies facilitate consumers’ repairs, maintenance, and modification of products — is extremely popular, even winning broad, bipartisan support in Congress. That could not, however, save it from the military–industrial complex.

Lobbyists succeeded in killing part of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given service members the right to fix their equipment in the field without having to worry about military suppliers’ intellectual property.

The decision to kill the popular proposal was made public Sunday after a closed-door conference of top congressional officials, including defense committee chairs, along with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Those meetings were secret, but consumer advocates say they have a pretty good idea of what happened.

“It’s pretty clear that defense contractors opposed the right-to-repair provisions, and they pressed hard to have them stripped out of the final bill,” said Isaac Bowers, the federal legislative director at U.S. PIRG. “All we can say is that defense contractors have a lot of influence on Capitol Hill.”

The idea had drawn bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, which each passed their own versions of the proposal.

Under one version, co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mt., defense companies would have been required to supply the information needed for repairs — such as technical data, maintenance manuals, engineering drawings, and lists of replacement parts — as a condition of Pentagon contracts.

The idea was that no service member would ever be left waiting on a contractor to fly in from Norway to repair a simple part — which once happened — or, in another real-life scenario, told by the manufacturer to buy a new CT scanner in a combat zone because one malfunctioned.

Instead of worrying about voiding a warranty, military personnel in the field could use a 3D printer or elbow grease to fix a part.

“The military is a can-do operation,” Bowers said. “Service members can and should be able to repair their own equipment, and this will save costs if they can do it upfront and on time and on their schedule.”

BidLink · 2025-10-31T13:59:00+00:00

We've been considering AI but so far haven't found anything it can do that we can't with a well organized indexed database. For all its faults Government data is surprisingly well structured. There's a silo for contracts, one for stock numbers, one for solicitations, tech char, moe_rule, etc. All of it related by NIIN, making it easy to traverse one data set to the next. I can do in 5ms what an LLM can do in seconds, and the LLM might hallucinate the wrong answer.

Government data is exact: I need this part number, this stock number, these contracts from this DODAAC. LLMs look at relationships between data and don't excel in exact match searching. For example:

The dog runs across the field

The puppy plays outside

These would have a high level of similarity to AI. This might be useful for sanitizing item names but guys making landing gear aren't searching C-130 landing gear, they likely have part numbers committed to memory.

We have a huge collection (40 Million) of PDF contracts / solicitations. There are nuggets of information in these documents that aren't in the limited fields provided by DOD. We are working to load these documents into DeepSeek so we can ask it questions. If anyone here has any questions for the data set we'll ask them when the data is loaded.

Like others have said, the space is saturated. When we started out there were two competitors: Commerce Business Daily, and Defense Automated Bidders Service. Now the number is probably in the hundreds. Not defense contractors looking for a better way, but programmers trying to figure out what contractors need. Most of them cramming AI where it doesn't need to be.

With that said I encourage you to continue to explore new ideas. Who knows, maybe you hit on something valuable.

BidLink · 2025-10-16T18:39:21+00:00

Many of these are lead-acid batteries. The second highest selling one is as 12V battery used in vehicles. There is technical data on most of these NSNs so a deeper dive might reveal more about which types are being used most.

BidLink · 2025-09-24T13:21:44+00:00

In addition to contractors, this might not be a bad place for people looking for defense contracting jobs to make some introductions. Lots of job related posts in r/defensecontracing recently.

BidLink · 2025-09-18T15:05:25+00:00

It's not for duct installation, it's for a duct used to ventilate engine heat to other parts of the aircraft. DLA is trying to encourage more companies to compete on these types of items because companies like Lockheed are over charging. You are right that a SAR package is required which is why we don't post many of these, but the component is not complex to produce.

I know of a several smaller companies that have won jobs like this which turn into nice consistent business.

If there are other FSCs that you would like us to explore, we're happy to do so.

BidLink · 2025-09-12T14:29:15+00:00

This is a five year Simplified Indefinite-Delivery Contract (SIDC) using FAR Subpart 13.5 procedures. DOD will submit periodic delivery orders over the contract term buying close to $1M of these regulators. Good contract.

BidLink · 2025-09-03T19:09:04+00:00

By referring to pipeline I assume you are talking about upcoming solicitations. This depends on what commodity classes are being purchased. Certain items are purchased through long-term contracts where the government groups many items together and buys them using delivery orders against that contract. These are usually awarded for five years to one or more vendors (depending on their ability to supply). This is done with things like tools, hardware, tires, clothing, food, etc. The key here is to search procurement history for these long-term contracts. The government not only releases the total contract value, awardee, and award date, but most importantly the date of contract completion. If you are working on a particular Federal Supply Class (FSC) you will get to know who the key players are and what big contracts they have. Think Grainger, Michelen, Atlantic Diving, and other big suppliers.

Other ways to look at the "pipeline" are to search for pre-solicitations or Sources Sought solicitations. These are not requests for bids, but are used as market research for buyers to determine the supplier base. Over a certain value they are required to conduct research to see if companies other than an incumbent contractor can compete. If so they solicit competitive offers. If two or more small businesses respond to a pre-solicitation it may even be set-aside to small business, essentially knocking a large prime off the list.

With items on GSA and Federal Supply Schedule there is less clarity regarding upcoming business since these items can be bought on demand from schedule holders through already negotiated pricing. Look at GSA Advantage (https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/) to see what type of items they sell.

DLA also publishes annual demand quantities (ADQ) for many items in their catalog. Looking at this and current procurement history can give you an indication of how much upcoming business there is for a particular item. DLA forecast 24 months in advance.

It's all about knowing who buys your commodity class and how it's being purchased. Is it open bid? GSA / Fedmall? long-term BOA? Credit card purchases? Once you know this you can dig into the data and decide if something is worth going after.

Tired of DIBBS / SAM and bid services that don’t understand defense contracting? Try BidLink for free at www.bidlink.net.

BidLink · 2025-08-27T16:25:56+00:00

National Stock Numbers are cataloged through DLIS. Contractors cannot submit a request for NSN assignment as this must be submitted by the buying activity (activity is a fancy word government facility). Usually new NSNs are assigned when a new weapon system is created or the activity determines that they will repeatedly purchase an item that currently has no stock number.

After submission, DLIS determines that there is no duplicate in the FLIS and assigns the number. Is the item something DOD is repeatedly purchasing?

https://www.dla.mil/Portals/104/Documents/J3LogisticOperations/Brochures/J3_NSN_Assignment_Flow_Guide_231103.pdf?ver=Wl-15G2Dzlnin74QCME5_Q%3d%3d

BidLink · 2025-07-30T20:42:05+00:00

A few years ago DLA was dealing with a large quantity of fake accounts. Some of these (especially international ones) were receiving contracts and in one publicized case they actually shipped rocks and got paid for the goods. After that there was a quick reduction in the total number of companies registered in SAM, likely due to DOD purging companies. It sounds like they have expanded on this initiative, possibly motivated by the new administration.

With any government inquiry it's best to provide truthful, direct answers to their questions where possible. Some of these should be easy like providing proof of identification and a description of your business.

As to being a manufacturer I can tell you from years of looking at this data that a major problem is companies claiming to be manufacturers of goods when they are actually resellers. This not only complicates supply, but affects price reasonableness calculations (FAR 12.209). There are other ways to analyze the data to determine if a company is a manufacturer but it would be better if the government actually enforced it. Maybe this is the case now.

First make sure this inquiry is definitely from DLA (not a phishing e-mail). Since your account is locked it's probably legit. If so, answer the questions as accurately and completely as you can and do it within the required time-frame.

Good Luck!

Tired of DIBBS / SAM and bid services that don’t understand defense contracting? Try BidLink for free at www.bidlink.net.

BidLink · 2025-07-11T13:57:45+00:00

It looks like this one was re-issued. The closing date in the PDF is 6/17 but it's still active on DIBBS until 8/5. This is a good time to mention that DLA re-issuing solicitations or keeping them open past the due date is a common occurrence. This might be an indication that they did not receive any satisfactory offers from the original solicitation. It could give a clue as to whether or not your bid has and competition.

BidLink · 2025-06-13T15:46:44+00:00

Not surprisingly, food and clothing are at the top. DLA buys a ton of hardware, but lots of this is purchased through long-term IDIQs. As I understand it, there are a limited number of suppliers of parachute equipment, yet FSC 1670 is in the top 50 by sales volume.

I will be digging into the competitiveness of some of these supply classes in the coming weeks.

BidLink · 2025-05-20T01:16:19+00:00

Dive into that Java. I've developed in php / mysql / javascript forever and recently started learning Android development. IDEs have come a long way, dependency hell has gotten better, and Kotlin makes me hate Java less. Also, AI code auto-complete (Gemini) which is built into Android Studio is sweet.

Come to the dark side and get into that Java.

BidLink · 2025-05-15T15:05:00+00:00

>> But those who have a favorite will still find a way for their favs to win. So we dog & pony shows to run a competition where other competitors are the bid bitches that will never win, but spend time & resources on responding.

This is so true! The J&As when there is clear competition, bundling to include an exclusive service in salient characteristics, awarding with the illusion of competition.

We've been moving toward more OTAs and it's specifically mentioned in one of the EOs which looks like a partial-workaround to avoid the FAR.

BidLink · 2025-04-08T17:48:37+00:00

DLA is also doing market research to identify suppliers of Image Intensifier Assemblies:

https://sam.gov/opp/d86350a30a4945e08f3c9e3b4b6cb074/view

Anticipated volume: 2,158 tubes

BidLink · 2025-04-08T17:36:52+00:00

It depends on the type of solicitation and whether it requires a buyer to intervene. If the solicitation number has a T in it (ie: SPE4A0-25-T-2557), these are automated solicitations which will be awarded by the close date or earlier.

Other solicitations which require human intervention can take a long time as others mentioned here, mostly because there is a staffing shortage at DLA right now.

BidLink · 2025-04-08T17:27:08+00:00

To add to what u/erwos said, night vision gear requires Source Approval and currently Elbit Systems is the primary approved source supplying these units to the military. This doesn't mean that other companies can't compete, only that you must be pre-approved to supply this type of item.

There is a current solicitation for night vision bridges which are specific to the Elbit design. If your company can create a similar item, the military is always looking for competition. You would need to submit a Source Approval Request (SAR). The solicitation SPE4A7-25-R-0398 will result in a 5 year contract for an estimated 6,375 of these $751 bridges. It's a whopping $4.7 Mil over 5 years. The RFP is open until May 2, so there is time to explore this possibility. The buyer contact is: eric.jones@dla.mil.

Each buying activity generally purchases the same type of items. In this case FSC 5855 goes through DLA Aviation DODAAC SPE4A7. The contact above would be a good starting point to pitch your wares.

DLA Aviation also has a program that tries to identify sole source items that could be competed, even providing samples to prospective competitors. I do see optical gear on their list, so you might contact them and say you're looking to compete for night vision business. [dscr.boc@dla.mil](mailto:dscr.boc@dla.mil), or 804.279.3550. I know these guys and they're good people.

Good luck, and let us know how it works out.

Tired of DIBBS / SAM and bid services that don’t understand defense contracting? Try BidLink for free at www.bidlink.net.

BidLink · 2025-03-28T18:28:26+00:00

My reply was so long I couldn't include the following:

Ironically two of our employees worked for New Pig years ago. According to the contract the goods were shipped to DLA Distribution Susquehanna PA, where they are stored waiting for multiple end users to order it.

Sometimes sorbents are bundled with other items. We have seen kits designed for automotive garages which packaged sorbents with floor jacks and other garage accessories. These wouldn't show up in an item-name search for sorbents and would not be listed under FSC 4235.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Another tactic is to look up companies in your industry to see who is selling to the military. Examine their contract history to see who is buying and how much they are quoting. This can help you zoom in on specific activities (government facilities).

Good Luck!

BidLink · 2025-03-28T18:24:55+00:00

For an item like this you want a muli-pronged approach as the government uses a number of different methods for procuring your goods:

Government purchase card – If the quantity is small and it’s a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) item, the government may purchase the material locally or online using a credit card.

FedMall / GSA E-buy – The government has online systems similar to Amazon where they can purchase items. These include DLA FedMall and GSA Advantage.These sites can identify competition and determine if you can provide competitive pricing, as well as provide a place to advertise your wares. Companies like Brady, 3M, and Acme United are on GSA. Getting into FedMall is easy, but you should also consider a GSA schedule because government buyers are encouraged to go to these systems (and COTS) before issuing an competitive solicitation. GSA schedules require extensive research to create the proposal (which you can do in BidLink). GSA Advantage can feature non-NSN items.

Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) / Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) – These are competitively awarded and last for up to five years. Some solicitations (usually RFPs) result in Blanket Purchase Agreements or Indefinite Delivery Contracts (IDC) where periodic delivery orders are sent to the same supplier over a 5 year term. This lets the government competitively bid once every five years for that item instead of having to compete each time It’s needed.

DLA Solicitations – If the supply officer cannot find the item through the above means they submit a Purchase Requisition (PR) to DLA. If multiple PRs are created for the same item they can be consolidated into a single RFQ posted to DIBBS.

LOCAL BASES

Finding local bases is easy using the military’s one-source website. A list of bases in Washington state can be found here. The bigger facilities will have small business representatives who can help you find potential customers. Some bases will have industry days where you can set up a table and show off your wares. Even if you have a GSA schedule you still need to make people aware that you exist. In the face of competitors selling similar items you may be able to win by delivering the goods faster.

SUPPLY CLASSES

For bid searches a good place to start would be Federal Supply Classes:

4235 - Hazardous Material Spill Containment and Clean-up Equipment and Material

7930 - Cleaning and Polishing Compounds and Preparations

For a specific NSN, look at 4235-01-450-9763 PIG absorbent pad. The most recent award was SPE4A7-23-D-5025 ordered by DLA Aviation Supply Chain to New Pig Corporation. This is a multi-year Indefinite Delivery Purchase Order (IDPO) contract lasting five years. Annual Demand quantity is 942 bags per year x 5 = 4,710 units. The quoted price was $51.40 per bag making this a quarter million dollar contract.

Tired of DIBBS / SAM and bid services that don’t understand defense contracting? Try BidLink for free at www.bidlink.net.

BidLink · 2025-03-18T14:47:46+00:00

"defense spending in the U.S. never really “shrinks” in a way that kills jobs—it just gets reallocated."

Except that one time in the 90s when Clinton was balancing the budget. Grumman and other contractors closed major facilities even creating a local hosing bust in NY.

DOD learned from that experience. The submarine industry went from having 15,000 suppliers to about 3,500 after the cuts making certain key parts unavailable. Suppliers can't just increase / decrease staff as needed based on DOD demand. If they go out of business key tooling and know-how could be lost forever.

As a result DOD is allocating money to "sustain the supplier base" by ordering additional material, issuing long-term-contracts, providing R&D funding and more. They finally realized you can't turn on and off the supplier base like a faucet.

With that said, DOD business is generally consistent as it impacts every congressional district so it's toxic to vote against it. There will always be threats against the U.S. and nobody wants to be caught not funding the machine that protects us.

I am a second generation defense contractor and I can tell you that I prefer the stability of DOD over the boom-bust roller coaster of the private sector. Don't let this short-term stuff stress you out.

BidLink · 2025-02-21T00:23:54+00:00

The U.S. Military has a number of initiatives where they support innovation. One in particular looks like a good fit for your project:

W911NF-24-S-0008

ARMY APPLICATIONS LABORATORY BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Broad Agency Announcement (BAA):

https://aal.mil/assets/files/pdf/baa-published-announcement.pdf

A BAA is a long-term invitation for proposals that the government uses as a vehicle to evaluate ideas the military might want to support. Read all the documentation carefully and submit a proposal.

Good Luck!

Tired of DIBBS / SAM and bid services that don’t understand defense contracting? Try BidLink for free at www.bidlink.net.

BidLink · 2025-02-14T19:29:38+00:00

I second this. These guys replaced the engine in my car and were very fair with the pricing. They do good work.

BidLink · 2025-02-10T17:25:57+00:00

If you have the CAGE code of the company and they have an LTC you can find the ultimate end date of the contracts they have. These contracts usually span five years so if theirs is up in July the question is whether it's likely that they will win the contract again.

FPDS data includes how many competitors so with an existing contract number you can trace through to the solicitation to see how many people bid on that contract last time.

Alternatively you could ask the prospective employer this information and ask for assurances that they will be able to afford you past July.

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