I've given this advice elsewhere, and I'll give it here. Go look at the small business initiatives by each branch of the U.S. military; many are now posting lists of open contracts that you can bid on for an incredible array of things.
Browse through those lists and find something you can build.
I really believe the U.S. military is in the midst of a large scale transfer of military spending from traditional large defense contractors to smaller, innovative companies. The Air Force has even opened its own venture capital arm and is actively investing in small businesses. Most, if not every, branch in the military publicly posts contracts for small businesses to bid on.
I think Anduril is a great example of the possibilities in the "new" defense space.
What's interesting is this shift is very reminiscent of military manufacturing in Japan during World War 2; much of the manufacturing was actually done by small businesses of < 30 employees in "garages" scattered around the country instead of very large factories. That was one of the reasons American bombing by Superfortresses was so ineffective at first, and one of the reasons incendiary bombs began being used.
Happy to provide more detail on this. I've been thinking about this space for awhile.
I used to be a contracting specialist in the USAF. Anything you'll find on SAM is incredibly competitive and CO's will receive anywhere around 20 bids for anything that is purchased. I would recommend going after state and local. You can use bonfire, deltek or govspend to find those more local contracts with less competition.
I've been IN this space for a while and I can tell you while we are trying, it's not a clear cut as you make it seem.
For the most part there is no more low hanging fruit like you would see in movies like 'War dogs' etc... simply because Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budgets are basically gone, and that's where a lot of the fast money was.
Now, you need to know what you're doing because you're competing with the companies that survived the last few decades and live off of these smaller SBIR/STTR/OTA funding lines
To be clear this is not what Palantir and Anduril do. Both groups have professional and skilled proposal writers and very deep technical policy expertise when it comes to winning (and defending and contesting) awards and doing it in a way that will ensure that their products can get an Authority to Operate and actually work
You're not the first person I've heard this from; when you say "many are now posting lists of open contracts you can bid on" where are they posting these things? https://sam.gov/content/home is what my cursory Googling found, is this what you mean, or is there some other, more relevant site involved?
There should be a program that's easily accessible (not behind lawyer language) that DoD sponsors: We'll buy you a CNC machine, a laptop and a bunch of bar stock on our dime if you produce these parts as per these quality requirements by this date and of this quantity. If we're happy, you can keep the equipment for your next DoD project and you'll get a priority as an experienced vendor (that we invested in).
The issue with CNC machines is that one error in your code can and will easily crash one part of the machine into another part of the machine and thus break it. Often requiring a technician from the company and a bunch of spare parts to fix it, which, trust me, is never cheap.
So giving a CNC machine to just anyone without proper training is quite a bad idea.
The SBIR program is essentially what you describe… though with a research bent. Virtually zero red tape with a Phase I grant (apart from the application itself).
SBIR grants require a lot of expertise about the arcane application process.
There’s an entire service industry around helping businesses apply. The companies that I’ve seen be successful at it hired several people with SBIR experience specifically to handle the grant proposals.
I had 3 successful NSF proposals and could not have done it without an experienced team helping me just with the legalese and process.
My buddy and I did it last year. I wouldn't say you need a whole team. We picked an area and spent a two years honing an idea. He is a retired Air Force officer and had some contracting experience from the other side. I have a PhD in an unrelated field (math), a handful of papers and one unsuccessful NSF attempt. He learned all the application rules and took care of 100% of that stuff. I formulated the technical proposal and work plan, wrote the budget and the bulk of the technical writing.
My partner reached out to a few small business development centers but, while they were very eager to help, we ultimately received only very minor feedback and a general thumbs up. I'd say in the two years it took us to hone a winning technical proposal, my partner was able to become somewhat of an expert in the rules. During that time we also applied for a non-SBIR government grant, unsuccessfully, where we lost a lot of points for being a 2-man team. If you're willing to put in the time, it's very doable to write an application which follows the rules.
In fact, I'd say one thing we ran into was finding ourselves "inventing" rules because we were overly cautious with our compliance to what we thought were the rules. The application truly is the most difficult part of compliance for a SBIR Phase I.
The problems with our Phase I were purely technical. We weren't able to advance the state-of-the-art enough to be able to write a convincing commercialization plan. And I don't think there was any consulting firm we could have hired to fix that problem.
I did one once and it was a huge PITA and a very slow timeline. The free money part was nice, but the overhead and timeline mean I’ll probably stick to other funding sources in the future. If your founding team has extra PhDs and you want to pay them to do “research” it might work.
Not understanding what the benefit to the taxpayer is for this, when right now plenty of entrepreneurs willingly take on these startup costs themselves?
Huge benefits: Increase competition, overthrow incumbents, equip populace with basic skills and manufacturing capacity in case of when shit hits the fan, cheaper parts. Downsides I can think of: Exploitation of the program through various means by bad actors. It is no different than SBA low interest loans, just instead of capital, you get machines for specific purpose. Another one is injection molding, the entire industry has been shipped overseas. IM is fundamental to producing parts in large quantities and the dark art of making molds is almost extinct in USA.
I urge everyone to study WWII history. Overnight, they converted button/zip manufacturers to making carbureator parts for Airplanes. Literally, overnight. At 8pm, they were producing mother of pearl buttons. By noon next day, they were making first batch of pins for the deflector plate.
Today's generation has no clue what happens in trying times. They need to study history to see what really happened, almost overnight.
Why not, as a taxpayer, my interest is in defense of the nation and getting more “bang for the buck” so to speak :-) instead of giant defense companies milking billable hours.
I asked what the benefit would be of funding private enterprises that private enterprises are already willing to fund. And he provided a nonsensical spiel about WW2-era policies without explaining why those policies were necessary today, given that private enterprises are already willing to spend the money to fund those activities.
His suggestion would result in massive amounts of fraud and wealthy techbros getting free toys they don't need from the U.S. government courtesy of their fellow taxpayers.
Eh, I was thinking more like, "Build us a web portal for viewing the status of <random thing> and requesting more <random thing>." than, "Run guns for us cheaply."
Nuclear weapons were developed by the Soviets before the end of the 40's, so it was a very narrow window where the US was the sole holder of all nuclear arms (about five years).
Five years is an eternity though. The major factor was more likely we didn't have the capacity to produce a large number of nuclear weapons to tip the balance
It's definitely a land of fantasy today, I agree but one can always hope that maybe one day instead of killing each other we'd learn to live together and work together. Imagine how much more productive we'd be. To be honest I nearly didn't post this message because it's a bit off topic and definitely divisive. I definitely support all the brave people fighting for me to be safe because I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable killing someone else myself to protect my "country".
Looking at human history, that will never happen. As long as there is scarcity in the world, and as long as sovereign states exist, geopolitics and thus the looming threat of war will always exist.
Perhaps with that attitude. There's a lot of amazing things humans have accomplished that were once thought impossible. We are likely very, very early on in the anthropocene. Thousands of years from now I'm optimistic that the world will be a better place and that they'll look back on us as barbaric environment destroyers.
judging by recent political events in the UK and the US combined with the level of obesity and overconsumption in these nations I'd say we're already there
I don't buy that history is a good guide for the future here. All but the most recent history was in an era where we couldn't talk to eachother without physically travelling for weeks/months. The nature of diplomacy, politics, countries, and war have all fundamentally changed. The world has not "settled into" a new steady-state since those changes have been made (partially because significant changes are still happening).
You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.
That said I think you can look at the current and say with some confidence that there are at least a few wars left - there are too many current armed conflicts, and too many threats of armed conflict, to seriously believe otherwise.
> You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.
How, precisely, does one extrapolate from the EU (of all places) to a one world government? The variation across the world in everything from cultural and religious norms to even technical approaches to solving problems is extreme, and it has been like this since forever. The genesis of the EU seems, in my view, an evolution of American dominance of the continent after WWII. Is that what you mean? Further American influence tends to encourage (or coerce) countries into further integration?
I’d put the odds of any of that happening on a global scale at approximately zero, because there actually have been globe spanning empires in the past (multiple iterations, in point of fact), and they all collapsed or shed their empires when it became clear ruling it was no longer in the interest of the Sovereign or the Subjects.
Who said anything about an empire?
That is obviously not going to work and is not what the EU is.
The EU is far from perfect but is an early iteration of a workable model. I can’t see this happening even in somewhere with a pretty similar societal model as the US currently as the political siuation is so polarised.
This makes no sense. Using this logic, why don’t more countries attack, say Costa Rica, which doesn’t even have a military?
I think the OP probably doesn’t have a problem with actual defense projects, but if you’ve been paying any attention over the last 70 years, you will know that the US has attacked many countries under the guise of “defense”.
> Using this logic, why don’t more countries attack, say Costa Rica, which doesn’t even have a military?
You might want to read up on the "Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance". Essentially, "the rest of the Americas".
That mostly works because the set of potential aggressors is small. (Nicaragua and Panama). OK, fine, the US might want to, but they're close enough partners that they don't need to.
> they're close enough partners that they don't need to
I think that might be the crux of what GP was getting at. There's more to it than the ability to win (and in a hopeful dreamy world, I'd wish we can all get to the state where collaboration is always the obvious better choice, but that's obviously at least a few hundred years off... something to strive for, though)
To the US, "winning" is basically defined as having access to local resources (including workers) at market rates without the responsibility of governing.
AKA -- free trade. Global free trade exists because the US wants it to. In that sense, it's currently winning/won. The size of the US military and economy (and it's close allies) are largely what enforces that world order.
Personally, I think it's better than the old model of imperialism (it's certainly way less violent and has rapidly increased living standards across the globe). But it's still a case of the big powerful countries enforcing their will on smaller countries.
Free trade lives on the back of enormous military spending. Particularly commercial shipping lanes are protected by the power of the US Navy.
The past few years have seem drastically reduced US Naval spending, particularly on the protection of commercial shipping (the shipping and military news sites are almost ready to agree that the US Navy has abandoned this part of the mission entirely). Under Obama's administration we balked at protecting the commercial fishing rights of our allies in the Philippines and it's expected that this kind of policy in reaction to Chinese aggression in SEA will continue.
Then COVID hit us and we might actually see a real unravelling or the last 60 years of global economic policy.
This means that we should probably expect more conflict rather than less.
This is a hippie ideology that seems to only be held by people who live in secure circumstances that they take for granted and are oblivious to what it costs other people to create.
Hippies were the children of WW2 vets and were an entire generation who seemingly failed to understand that the world they lived in was forged at great personal cost by the previous generation and the anvil upon which it was forged was The Great Depression and WW2. The Hippie antiwar stance was like the collective voice of the subconscious of the previous generation that was deeply scarred by WW2 and wanted to just fight no more forever.
My country was actually raped, pillaged and involuntarily ruled by the British for a very long time. I am no child of a WW2 vet. There is a world outside of the United States of America. Please take your derogatory chat elsewhere. In another comment in this thread I pay respect to those that have fought in wars. You are reading too much (or perhaps too little) into my original comment and combining that with small minded pessimism.
I wasn't suggesting you were the child of a WW2 vet. Just disagreeing with the idea posited and doing my best to explain my reasons why, which is always a risky exercise on the internet.
Perhaps my reply was a bit too defensive - I’ll use the excuse that it’s uncharacteristically hot where I am and I can’t sleep. I do feel like you were being derogatory in your labelling of this as a Hippie ideology which I still think isn’t quite fair since you go on to generalise this negatively. I’m definitely aware that there have been many sacrifices made by older generations for the younger generations to live better lives - yet I do think that we can all do better at trying to build a world where we wouldn’t need as much conflict to make the world a better place for future generations.
FWIW, I am the child of a WW2 vet and also a former military wife. People who know me well have described me as a pro military hippie tree hugger.
It is my understanding that Shaolin priests believe "A man of peace must be strong" and both willing and able to defend his views in a fight to the death.
It's a shame you feel so dismissive toward people who prefer peace. The world would be a much better place if people didn't feel like it was ok to take what they want from others by force, or if people didn't follow ideologies that make them want to attack other people.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I feel like you've put many words into their mouth that may not have been there. It's perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that the current world order was built on the back of centuries (millennia, really) of aggression and violence, while still wishing it did not have to be that way -- or at least hoping the future could hold something better. I don't think that's naive, as long as we continue to make choices that recognize the actual state of the world, while still holding our hopes dear.
I, too, would not feel ok starting a company whose sole or primary purpose was to build for the military. Fortunately we live in a world where many, many people can choose not to fuel the military industrial complex without damaging our countries' preparedness for the wars they might need to fight, as there will always be others who ok with this line of work.
As a US citizen in a place that's more or less evenly red/blue split, and given the trajectory of US politics lately, I'm worried that if I help improve US military technology, it will later be used against me or my neighbors.
Even if the current posture for whatever nation is predominately that of defense, you have no idea what is going to happen in the next few years geopolitically, or even just when your country has new leadership. The defensive capabilities you help build today could easily be used for offense tomorrow.
I wonder, of the many hundreds of billions of dollars the US spends on defense every year, how much goes to those military operations to which you linked.
> hmm facilitating war, even if it means defence just doesn't sit quite right with me. shame we live in a world where this is even a thing
I don't know what this is supposed to even mean. Do you mean "it's a shame to live in a world where defence is necessary" or "it's a shame to live in a world where aggressors face defence"?
Everywhere you look around the world right now there is a money making machine. Imo more and more companies start choosing non ethical ways to earn currency. There hasn't been many sacred things in world nor lately nor ever..
We live in dangerous times, with multiple situations that can devolve into all-out wars very VERY quickly, and as Ukraine has shown it is extremely wise to prepare:
- obviously, everyone with a border to Russia has to fear invading orcs. Moldavia and the Baltic nations are at particular threat, given the speeches by Russian officials and think-tank representatives that suggest Russia wants to build back its Russian Empire glory days. Additionally, everyone is at threat from Russian cyber actors and Russian-backed separatist and far-right organizations.
- China has not only the Taiwan question, but also ongoing border skirmishes with India and resource-grabbing operations in the entire Pacific - hell they have been caught illegally fishing in waters as far away as Africa [1]. The risk of Chinese cyber attacks is just as high as Russia, although China seems to focus more on industrial espionage for now.
- The entire situation around Israel and Iran is highly volatile. Israel routinely strikes against targets both in Iran and Syria, and at least for the latter Putin has pretty much clarified that they won't keep looking away for much longer. And everyone in the region is worried about Iran, to the tune that it's likely that the idea of a "middle Eastern NATO" is already reality in secret.
- Almost all of Africa is under threat from internal conflict, both ongoing and future. Dictatorships of various kinds, border fights, civil wars, religious wars - name your idea of conflict cause and you will find it in Africa somewhere. Add to that economic insecurity and pressure from the effects of climate change, and the entire continent is an explosion just waiting to happen. The US doesn't have to take care much, but Europe will have to deal with a lot of refugees sooner or later (and to make it worse, we still haven't decided on how to deal with refugees in a way that doesn't threaten to destabilize our interior politics and complies with the ideals laid down in various international treaties).
- Half of South America is a similar bomb waiting to explode. Failed states (Venezuela), narco states (Mexico), states collapsing to gang warfare (Haiti), and the open possibility that it might need world-wide military intervention to stop Brazil from burning down the Amazon rainforest.
Yeah agreed. It's a shame though isn't it. Imagine a world where hundreds of billions of US defense spending could go into public services like free healthcare.
The problem isn't defense spending, the problem is resource misallocation, fraud and waste. The US is at the top of the healthcare expenditure per capita comparison by far [1] - there is enough money "in the system", it just ends up at the completely wrong places.
The US spends almost double as much money per citizen as countries as Germany, and yet, the quality of healthcare and accessibility are so much better here than the horror stories that regularly pop up here or on Reddit. Not to say our system is perfect - it's far from what I would consider to be decent - but the objective measurements of how the US' health care system performs are speaking clear and loud [2].
Sure, but just consider how many billions (trillions when we consider global spending?) of dollars are spent on either ways to kill other humans, or ways to defend from other people killing humans. What an amazing civilization we might be able to be, hundreds of years beyond our current level, if we could put that money toward literally anything else.
Yes, the grandparent mentioned health care, but there's a lot more that's possible. And hell, even if no one fixed the health care system in the US such that spending could go down to reasonable levels, I'd still imagine we could have free -- if expensive -- health care for all if we didn't have to allocate so much money to the military.
But that's not the world we live in; military preparedness is an absolute necessity.
Indeed, I agree with you on this and also read this report recently. But I think we're going down a bit of a rabbit hole here. My initial post was merely a comment on the unfortunate human condition currently, with the undertone of my desire that it shouldn't be this way.
Hi, if it's not too much to ask, could you please post some direct links for the open contracts for small businesses? I am merely curious but others might find those more useful.
On the SAM site above you can do an advanced filter for small business set aside and leave the search string empty. Not in this space so someone correct me if this is not what it means.
Former DoD contract specialist here, Sam.gov is the correct jumping off point for both information on how the process works and for where to find opportunities. The small business set aside is very important, since the regulations require that small businesses be considered to the maximum amount practicable, before larger companies can even be considered (Federal Prison Industries gets first dibs though). Veteran, woman, and minority owned businesses also get higher precedence, and those qualifiers can stack up - a minority woman veteran owned small business is golden, assuming the company can actually bid and perform properly. There are some other areas, such as HUBzone/economically disadvantaged areas that are also considered, but that's better to learn about direct from the information on Sam.gov than from a HN post.
It is a daunting task to register and follow the procedures, and you must be very attentive to detail as a small business owner; however, there are a ton of resources from the Small Business Administration to assist. Don't hesitate to contact them. Be persistent, patient, and proactive.
It used to be much harder than it is today, which is why it might seem to most people that federal contracting is a corrupt good ol' boy network; newcomers simply didn't follow the instructions right, due to complexity and/or confusion. Today though, it's a perfect time to get in the door.
Note that the "minority veteran woman" thing can be gamed a bit (and is) - I know of a few small businesses that are officially owned by the spouse of the actual leader so that they can qualify higher.
So even if your spouse doesn't check all three boxes, having the company officially be owned by your wife can help.
There is a bit more to the requirement than the company being owned by a woman, namely the requirements for women to be in control of the day to day operations of the business.
It is a similar requirement for veteran owned small businesses and I imagine “gaming” this would be tantamount to fraud.
About as far as I’ve seen be acceptable for “gaming” things is to use a joint venture that is 51% owned/controlled by whatever interest group (e.g., veteran, women, disadvantaged, all of the above, etc.).
Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not a common occurrence from my experience (15+ years active duty, as government employee, and working for a contractor on the actual contract/BD side).
Yeah, see my other comment here, but you make a good point about the definition of "owned" - it can't just be a name, it has to be a legally binding level of control over the operation s and finances. Unfortunately there's not really any standard metric for that which is enforceable.
Claiming a preference can be fraud, and is often abused, but... in reality, nobody's really checking unless there's a justifiable reason to. Not that I'm endorsing such fraud, and you're right, 51% is usually the safe way to go, but many LLC type setups don't have any easy way to help determine that. It's really quite time consuming and intrusive to determine "control" as the person writing or signing the contract. It's very much based on the assumption of honesty, unless there's some clear indication otherwise (and yes, due diligence is performed and documented, at least to some extent - it isn't just a Google search for "companies that sell widgets near me").
For an extreme example, I won't know that a company is a sweatshop using undocumented drug addicted children if their representations and warranties documentation says they don't.
Of course, and you are right on many/most accounts.
However, it is worth mentioning that it is definitely a dangerous game to play, even if the government doesn’t do anything.
Government contracting world is pretty cut throat and all it takes is a competitor, a partner, or an employee catching wind of the foul play and you make your company pretty vulnerable to a few things:
1) extortion for work share (e.g., a partner company threatening to out you to the contracting officer if they don’t give more work share % or some other form of monetary compensation)
2) A competitor contesting the contract award due to the awarded company not meeting the set aside requirements. This can be very costly and lead to the government being forced to look into things more thoroughly. It’s also public record and could seriously damage a company’s reputation in perpetuity.
3) A company employee filing a qui tam suit under the False Claims Act. This can lead to at best, a costly settlement, and at worse, repaying the government even after the work has already been performed.
Oh yeah, if someone else catches wind and argues, you're screwed as a contractor unless you can back it all up well. This is the dark side, the crab bucket, which often results in "the big guys" getting the contract in the end.
One simple example is a time I was trying to by doors. Simple doors, no special requirements, just doors, materials and installation, with knobs requiring a keyed access. The chosen provider bid properly, gave their description of key control and associated maintenance ("who has keys and what happens if we lose the keys"). Small business, local, etc. won the award. Competitor had a fit and submitted (after award) significant proof that the winning bidder was falsifying their minority owned status and had changed their business name several times to avoid previous poor past performance marks. TLDR the complainant was right, and eventually won the award.
It doesn't take a lot to get ruined, so please, just be honest. If you aren't, someone will know.
Yep that's almost standard practice by now, so there's lots of competition in that space. And most of the time you (the person researching/drafting/approving the contract) can't really verify it. For me I didn't mind, since it's on them if they committed fraud, not me. Plenty times I would ask to speak to the owner and find out it was "co-owned" with the wife's name on the business license to get woman-owned, and the husband's name (or wife's name, in many cases) to get veteran-owned. Hey, fine with me. Mostly all I wanted was that the work was to spec and delivered on time. If you can game the system without sacrificing legality or quality, go for it!
While most local governments will post a Request for Quote list, and this often includes IT related services. I disagree this is the good choice for a first business project, as missing a deadline can incur egregious fines.
Local specialized custom hr/tax/legal/retail/city software is always popular, as it is region specific and constantly changing. ;)
This is basically the origin of the M16 rifle, in its original incarnation as the 7.62mm chambered AR-10. The original prototypes were designed and built by Eugene Stoner and half a dozen other people in basically a garage.
I just finished Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode series titled "Supernova in the East". It details the context and history around Japanese involvement in World War 2.
It was absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend giving it a listen, even to people who think they aren't interested in war history.
The ASTRO America and Additive Manufacturing programs are great examples of this evolution, with 5 major Department of Defense contractors committed to sourcing 3D-printed parts from domestic suppliers.
> I think Anduril is a great example of the possibilities in the "new" defense space.
With "Anduril," are you referring to Toykeeper's (technically deprecated) LED driver (flashlight, torch) interface? If not, then what? If so, then please give me some idea how a flashlight interface may be employed in national defense. Thanks.
Can we not do this sort of thing here? Yes, I get that everyone has not heard of every single company in the world, but a quick web search for "anduril defense" or "anduril company" can solve that particular issue. There's no need to pedantically feign annoyance that someone used a term you aren't familiar with and need to do the most trivial of research.
Can we please not do this sort of thing here?!? HN has mods, and I'm sure everyone would appreciate if you didn't try to do their jobs for them. Thank you.
> but a quick web search for "anduril defense" or "anduril company"
OP gave no hint that it was a company or had anything to do with defense, and was talking about innovation. I'm not going to defend my ignorance, but I'm also not going to apologize for asking for clarification, not will I change my posting behavior based on your irrational sensibilities. Try to be a little tougher next time and not get so bent out of shape by an innocent question.
Other poster summed it up nicely, as there's a range of remedies from fees to lowering the payment you get to investigation to prison, but by far the most significant impact is this key metric:
Past Performance.
You can probably get away with screwing over the government once, maybe even twice. But good luck once you're legally and nationally blacklisted.
It seems like I'm constantly hearing about large companies bidding at price x and then winning the bid, only to have the budget run over 10 times the original bid. So it seems in some cases the issue is becoming filthy rich as you rake in billions in profit from deliberately going over time and over budget.
Browse through those lists and find something you can build.
I really believe the U.S. military is in the midst of a large scale transfer of military spending from traditional large defense contractors to smaller, innovative companies. The Air Force has even opened its own venture capital arm and is actively investing in small businesses. Most, if not every, branch in the military publicly posts contracts for small businesses to bid on.
I think Anduril is a great example of the possibilities in the "new" defense space.
What's interesting is this shift is very reminiscent of military manufacturing in Japan during World War 2; much of the manufacturing was actually done by small businesses of < 30 employees in "garages" scattered around the country instead of very large factories. That was one of the reasons American bombing by Superfortresses was so ineffective at first, and one of the reasons incendiary bombs began being used.
Happy to provide more detail on this. I've been thinking about this space for awhile.