--- title: "The company that lost the FAA’s SMART contract still got an order with its name" description: "On 23 June 2026 the FAA awarded Air Space Intelligence the $875,950,000 SMART contract; on 13 August a non-competed $500,000 order under the same name went to a US data-analytics software company, which had lost the competition." url: https://csidia.com/en/notes/faa-smart-palantir-ordine-non-competitivo/ lang: en date: 2026-08-28 label: "Observatory" publisher: CSIDIA S.r.l. (https://csidia.com/) italiano: https://csidia.com/note-operative/faa-smart-palantir-ordine-non-competitivo/ --- # The company that lost the FAA’s SMART contract still got an order with its name On 23 June 2026 the Federal Aviation Administration awarded **Air Space Intelligence** (ASI), a Boston company, the contract to modernise how the United States manages air traffic. The federal register of public contracts — the procurement equivalent of an SEC filing — records a ceiling of **$875,950,000** over twelve years, awarded after full and open competition with **12 offers** received. The losers were **a US data-analytics software company** and **Thales**, two companies far larger than ASI. On 13 August 2026 — fifteen days before today — the same FAA office that ran the award recorded a second act: a $500,000, non-competed order to the data-analytics company. The official description opens with the same word as the contract it had lost: `SMART`. ## An award won with twelve offers The programme covers two systems. **FMDS** (Flow Management Data and Services) replaces the FAA’s current traffic-flow management; **SMART** runs as a capability inside it and flags congestion before aircraft leave the ground. The public register (PIID `693KA726C00064`, office `693KA7 ENROUTE & TERMINAL CONTRACTS`) codes the procedure as `FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION AFTER EXCLUSION OF SOURCES`, with solicitation procedure `ALTERNATIVE SOURCES`: full and open competition, but after some sources were excluded — not the category without exclusions, which in the federal scheme is a different one. The first obligation on record is **$11,484,250**; the ceiling with all options is the figure quoted above — numbers anyone can verify for themselves, not figures from a press release. ## What ASI and the FAA state On 22 June ASI distributed its own release via PR Newswire. FAA Administrator **Bryan Bedford** is quoted there: “FMDS and SMART will give controllers modern, data-driven tools to better anticipate demand, balance capacity, and manage traffic before delays occur.” ASI’s President of Civil Aviation, **Bernard Asare**, states: “We have invested nearly $100 million of our own resources to develop a platform that is operational today.” A figure only ASI knows: a private company, no accounts filed with the SEC. The same applies to another number, cited more by the press than by ASI itself: Flyways is said to serve over 40% of US air traffic. The trade site *DroneXL* isolates it this way: “That 40 percent figure is ASI’s own marketing number, and it deserves a closer look than the headlines gave it” — being available to dispatchers at three carriers is not the same as routing four flights in ten across the country. ## On 13 August, an order with the same name The same office, `693KA7`, that awarded the contract to ASI, records on 13 August the PIID `693KA726P00024`: type `PURCHASE ORDER`, $500,000, description `SMART - [COMPANY] PURCHASE ORDER`. The period of performance runs from 13 to 14 August: one day. The competition field reads `NOT COMPETED UNDER SAP`, one offer received, procedure `SAP NON-COMPETITION (FAR 13)` — a simplified, uncompeted acquisition. It is not attached to any umbrella contract: the field for that instrument is blank. This is not the normal shape of the relationship between the FAA and the data-analytics company. In the same period another office at the same agency — `692M15 ACQUISITION & GRANTS` — records an order to the same company of $9,483,339.79 for unrelated systems, described `[COMPANY] FOR ASKME/ASPIRE/ADO`, under a GSA schedule. Thales, the other loser, appears in the same window only on orders tied to its own ground systems — instrument landing signals, spare parts, a contract option — and on none carrying the name `SMART`. We do not know what the order is for. No statement from the data-analytics company mentions it; no outlet we checked reports it; the description field says nothing beyond the label. It could be transition support, data interoperability between the old system and ASI’s, or something else: the register does not say. We report it as we found it — a documented fact whose reason stays open. ## Filed, stated, reported by others Three categories, not to be confused. **Filed**: the two records in the federal USASpending/FPDS register, with structured fields — amounts, dates, competition codes — verifiable by anyone at the addresses below. **Stated**: Bedford’s and Asare’s words in ASI’s release, including the figures only ASI can know, because it is private. **Reported by others**: *DroneXL*’s critical read on the 40% figure, and *The Motley Fool*’s 25 August summary — “[The company] just lost a massive $875 million FAA artificial intelligence contract to a much smaller competitor” — reliable sources, but one step removed from the underlying document. The distinction also touches the data-analytics company, which is listed and does file with the SEC. Since 2020 it has used **Item 1.01** — the 8-K caption for a material definitive agreement — exactly three times: 2 April 2021, 1 April 2022, 1 July 2022, always paired with **Item 2.03** (creation of a financial obligation), always for amendments to its credit agreement of 7 October 2014, for which Wells Fargo is administrative agent. Since then — over four years, through the enterprise agreement with the US Army, ImmigrationOS with ICE, the SMART competition, and now this order — it has not filed another Item 1.01: in its history, that caption is reserved for bank agreements alone. [See the service](https://csidia.com/en/solutions/document-compliance) · [Talk to an engineer](https://csidia.com/en/contact) ## What we do not know We do not know why the FAA issued the 13 August order, or whether similar ones will follow: we checked through 28 August, and USASpending can lag by several days. We do not know whether the data-analytics company or Thales filed a protest against the award to ASI: the sources we checked report none, and a search of GAO’s protest docket returned a 403 at the time of verification — we do not treat that as proof of absence. We do not know how an AI routing system will be certified for safety before it runs inside national airspace: *DroneXL* flags this as missing from the announcement itself, not a fact we verified. We do not know, finally, whether the figures ASI states would hold up to an independent audit: no one can, because it is private. ## The question for the buyer Anyone buying a critical system — air traffic, but the lesson holds for any mission infrastructure — is buying, today, a promise of continuity between who wins on paper and what happens in operations: a competitor defeated in open competition can still stay in the room through a channel the competition never provided for. That is not a problem in itself: complex systems often need transition support from whoever knows the prior infrastructure. It becomes one if no one inside the buying organisation keeps a register of who receives what, under what degree of competition — the same gap measured in [an audit with no exit strategy](https://csidia.com/en/notes/audit-wfp-nessuna-strategia-di-uscita). The concrete questions: which spending channels stay open toward a vendor that lost the main competition; whether every order to that vendor passes the same competitive review, or whether part of it slips under the simplified-acquisition threshold; and whether the figures a vendor states about itself have ever been checked by anyone other than the vendor — the same question we raise about [who owns what a supplier builds on top of your data](https://csidia.com/en/notes/palantir-mercury-ontologia-di-chi-e). ## Sources - [USASpending — FAA award to Air Space Intelligence, PIID 693KA726C00064](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_693KA726C00064_6920_-NONE-_-NONE-/) - [USASpending — FAA order to the data-analytics company, PIID 693KA726P00024](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_693KA726P00024_6920_-NONE-_-NONE-/) - [ASI press release on PR Newswire, 22 June 2026](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/asi-selected-by-faa-to-modernize-the-national-airspace-system-302806855.html) - [DroneXL, “FAA Awards SMART Air Traffic Contract to Air Space Intelligence, Beating [the company] and Thales,” 26 June 2026](https://dronexl.co/2026/06/26/faa-smart-contract-asi-air-space-intelligence/) - [The Motley Fool, “[The company] Lost an $875 Million Contract. Is the Stock Still a Buy?,” 25 August 2026](https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/08/25/palantir-lost-an-875-million-contract-is-the-stock/) - [List of the data-analytics company’s 8-K filings (SEC EDGAR, submissions JSON)](https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001321655.json) - [Form 8-K of the data-analytics company, 1 July 2022 — Items 1.01 and 2.03](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312522187265/d352705d8k.htm) Note by CSIDIA S.r.l. (Vignola, MO, Italy): https://csidia.com/en/notes/faa-smart-palantir-ordine-non-competitivo/ · Who we are and what we do: https://csidia.com/en/at-a-glance/ · engagement@csidia.com