Procurement advisory
Specification and evaluation support for counter-UAS purchases, including the approved-systems constraints that now govern what an agency is permitted to acquire.
Counter-UAS procurement has a structural oddity: the people who know the technology best are the people selling it, and the constraint on what an agency may buy now sits in a federally maintained list rather than in a product brochure.
That leaves specification and evaluation as work that has to be done by someone without a product to place.
Why this is live now
- The SAFER SKIES framework establishes an Authorized Technologies List of approved categories and an Authorized Systems List identifying approved systems at make-and-model level.
- Listed systems pass a multi-agency review involving DOJ, DHS, DoD, FAA, FCC and NTIA, so the list, not the vendor's claim, determines what is acquirable.
- The lists are maintained through the FBI's Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, which is an agency-access system rather than a public catalogue.
- Vendors cannot credibly advise on a comparison they are party to, which leaves the role open.
Who this is for
- State, local, tribal and territorial agencies procuring under the new framework
- State Administrative Agencies allocating C-UAS award funds
- Airports and venue operators running a detection procurement
- Facility owners comparing vendor proposals
What we would do
Analysis and advisory work. We have no deployed installations in this segment and do not imply otherwise.
- Turning an assessment into a specification a competitive procurement can be run against
- Evaluation criteria and a scoring basis that will survive a challenge
- Reviewing vendor responses against the specification rather than against each other's marketing
- Identifying where the approved-systems position needs confirming before an award
FAQ
▸Can you tell us which system to buy?
We can tell you what your site and your obligations require, what to ask of each bidder and how to score the answers. We do not resell, take vendor commission or hold a product line, which is the only basis on which that advice is worth anything.
▸Can you check the Authorized Systems List for us?
Not directly. It is maintained through a law enforcement portal, so access sits with the agency rather than with an adviser. In practice the work is structured around the agency's own access, and any proposal saying otherwise is describing access it does not have.
▸We already have a preferred vendor. Is there anything to do?
Often, yes, and it is the specification rather than the selection. A procurement built around one vendor's feature set is the kind that gets challenged, and a sole-source position needs a documented basis whether or not the choice turns out to be right.