Sources Sought
Requesting infomation for MISHAP ANALYSIS & ANIMATION FACILITY (MAAF) FLIGHT RECORDER DOWNLOAD SOLUTIONS ACQUISITION AND SUSTAINMENT
Dept of Defense · Dept of the Air Force · Sol. FA940126Mishap
Due in 19 days
AI summary Beta
The Air Force (377th Mission Support Group, Kirtland AFB, NM) is running a Sources Sought request for information on engineering and sustainment services for the Mishap Analysis & Animation Facility. The contractor would build and maintain hardware and software that downloads data from USAF aircraft flight recorders, for a 12-month base period plus four 12-month options. This is a market survey, not a request for a price offer.
Watch out for
- Depends on recorder-maker proprietary data. You must get NDAs and proprietary pinouts and algorithms from the recorder makers yourself, and those makers may be slow or unwilling to share with a new entrant.
Agreements (NDAs) directly with flight recorder OEMs as required to obtain proprietary
- Very specialized technical skills. The lead engineer needs deep knowledge of many legacy and modern recorder formats and chip-level flash extraction, which is hard for a small team to staff.
Lead Systems Engineer (Key): Must possess deep domain expertise in legacy and
- Fast repair turnaround. Failed download systems must be fixed or replaced within 3 business days, with a 99% uptime target, which needs spare parts and quick support.
within 3 business days of notification to restore non-operational download systems.
- Government gets unlimited data rights. The government keeps unlimited rights to software, source code and schematics developed at its expense, which can conflict with a firm's proprietary code.
Unlimited Data Rights to all software, source code, schematics, API specifications, and
- Long 5-year commitment. A base year plus four option years means a long commitment where the government can decline options.
12-month Base Period plus four (4) 12-month Option Periods.
Read from the notice and 2 attachments.
- PWS.pdf
- REQUEST FOR INFORMATION_SAM.pdf
Full brief
What they want
- Design, build and test download interfaces (chassis, cabling, test fixtures, software drivers) for intact flight recorders and for circuit cards pulled out of damaged recorders
- Maintain and build download solutions for many recorder makes (GE, General Dynamics, Fairchild, L3Harris, Honeywell, Universal Avionics, Curtiss-Wright, Mercury)
- Make sure raw data maps to the recorder makers' own formats so transcriptions are bit-exact
- Repair or replace failed download systems within 3 business days of notification, and manage obsolescence
- Train MAAF government staff on operating the hardware and software, with limited diagnostics
- Run on modern Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Microsoft Windows as standalone, offline systems
- Sign and keep NDAs with recorder makers to get proprietary pinouts, data structures and decompression algorithms
- Period of performance
- 12-month base period plus four 12-month option periods
- Place of performance
- Contractor facilities and AFSEC/SEFE (MAAF) facilities at Kirtland AFB, NM
- Offers due
- 2026-10-28 12:00 (UTC-06:00), per the response deadline field
What to include when you submit
- Answer the RFI questionnaire (REQUEST FOR INFORMATION_SAM.pdf), which has four sections: company profile, technical capabilities, software and data rights, and sustainment
- Give legal name, CAGE code, UEI, address, point of contact and web address
- State business size under NAICS 541330 or 541511 and any small business designations (8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB)
- List any GSA MAS, IDIQ, GWAC or DoD-wide vehicles you can be bought through
- Say how much experience you have with each listed recorder maker
You must have
- Facility and staff must be cleared to handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)
Facilities and contractor personnel must maintain clearance to
- Must negotiate and keep NDAs with the flight recorder makers to get proprietary technical data
Agreements (NDAs) directly with flight recorder OEMs as required to obtain proprietary
- Two key personnel: a Program Manager and a Lead Systems Engineer with deep flight recorder data-structure, bus protocol and chip-level extraction expertise
Lead Systems Engineer (Key): Must possess deep domain expertise in legacy and
Current contractor
No incumbent is named. The PWS says government-furnished equipment includes legacy download hardware previously fabricated by the contractor, which suggests a current or past contractor exists.
Not in the notice text
- How to send the RFI response (email address or portal) is not stated in the notice or attachments provided
- Contract type and estimated value are not stated
- Whether a later solicitation will be set aside for small business; the notice lists no set-aside
- Page limits or format for the RFI response
- Whether the work will be one contract award or how the many recorder types will be phased
- The name of the current or past contractor
- The PSC code is blank in the notice
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Key facts
- Response due
- Oct 28, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC
- Posted
- Sep 28, 2026
- Notice type
- Sources Sought
- Solicitation
- FA940126Mishap
- Agency
- Dept of Defense · Dept of the Air Force
- Office
- FA9401 377 MSG PK
- NAICS
- 541511
- Business type
- IT, software & telecom
- Place of performance
- Kirtland AFB, NM, 87117
- Contracting contact
- CASSANDRA BENGFORTcassandra.bengfort@us.af.mil5058467341
Full notice text from SAM.gov
The contractor shall provide engineering, acquisition, and sustainment services to develop, maintain, and sustain modern hardware+software solutions for USAF aircraft flight recorder download and data decompression / transcription. This effort encompasses developing download capabilities for both full-up (undamaged) flight recorders and bench-level extracted Circuit Card Assemblies (CCA) across diverse solid-state recorder architectures. All software and hardware interfaces developed must execute on modern computer hardware and operating systems (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Microsoft Windows) and yield output file formats fully compatible with Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) data decompression and transcription software tools.
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