The Department of Defense announced $5.71 billion worth of new defense contracts Tuesday in the form of 10 separate contracts, but these contracts were not all created equal.
By far the largest contract of the day was a massive $5.3 billion, 914-winner indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to requisition services under the Navy's SeaPort Enhanced (SeaPort-e) acquisition program.
A distant second in size -- but still sizable in its own right -- the second-largest contract of the day went to Lockheed Martin (LMT -0.20%), which was awarded a $300 million sole-source, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity foreign military sales contract to develop and produce multiple test vehicles and equipment, plus provide mission planning, a mission operational flight program, test support, logistics support, sustainment, and non-recurring engineering work the militaries of Finland and Australia. Work on this contract should be complete by Nov. 19, 2018.
Also, two smaller contracts were awarded:
- PPG Industries (PPG 0.07%) won an $8.9 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with firm-fixed-price task orders to supply the Military Sealift Command (MSC) with paints, coatings, solvents, preservation products, and engineering/technical services. This contract will run through at least Sept. 30, 2014. It contains four optional extension periods of 12 months' duration, however. If exercised, these options could extend the contract out as far as September 2018.
- And finally, Teledyne (TDY -10.95%) won an $8.4 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for work on the U.S. Air Force's Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems program. This program aims to develop new theories explaining how conceptual knowledge is represented in the human brain, to test those theories by demonstrating the ability to predict and interpret concept-related patterns of neural activity. Experiments funded by this contract will continue through Jan. 16, 2017.
