Dark Wolf's $75M Air Force award offers lesson in leveraging flexible contracting
By
Nick Wakeman
Dark Wolf Solutions has secured a $75 million Air Force award that serves as an example of how companies can leverage flexible contracting methods to bring their solutions to the market.
Dark Wolf Solutions' new $75 million blanket purchase agreement with the Air Force is a great example of how companies can leverage flexible contracting practices such as the government’s Small Business Innovation and Research program.
This BPA award for cyber innovation services is the result of Dark Wolfs' work with the Air Force through the SBIR program and reaching Phase III, or the production phase of technology development.
In this case, work will include software penetration testing and adversarial assessment.
Dark Wolf CEO Rick Tossavainen said via email that the company has been active with the Air Force because the military branch is “very approachable for a small company like ours.” The Air Force makes significant use of Other Transaction Authority procurements, SBIRs and so-called Pitch Days, where companies can present an idea to the customer.
Rather than asking for hundreds of pages of proposals, the Air Force solicits technical proposals with staffing and pricing proposals.
“Then there’s an in-person coding challenge or orals presentation,” Tossavainen said. “This makes it much easier for us to demonstrate what we can do and how we think we can help as our key personnel meet directly with the buyer.”
For this particular Air Force BPA, Dark Wolf will work with Air Force customers at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Dark Wolf was launched in late 2018 when it was spun out of Wolf Den Associates, which recognized a need to separate Dark Wolf’s technical solutions business from its strategy and management consulting business. Wolf Den wanted to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.