The U.S. military is spending far more on spare parts for an aging fleet. The number of companies it buys them from has not grown. This report covers who buys, who wins, what buyers can't get, and where small and veteran-owned manufacturers fit.
Built from 361,825 federal award records for aircraft and engine parts, 14,122 SAM.gov notices posted May–September 2026, and the SAM registrations of the firms involved. Every figure below comes from a query of that data, not an estimate. Five limits matter enough to state before the numbers.
Three developments in the last six weeks point at the same problem: the U.S. fleet is old, the parts it needs come from too few places, and Washington has said it wants that changed.
"We have a $14 billion hole in supply… Gone are the days of monopolies. I need five producing them."
Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry, Commander, Air Force Materiel Command, as reported by Military Times, 18 Sep 2026Aircraft grounded for lack of parts are up 87% over seven years. About 53% of the fleet is over 30 years old, and 55% has passed its "useful" service life. Old aircraft fail more often, and their original parts makers have moved on.
A revival of the WWII small-manufacturer program. It aims federal money at the small firms that make up over 70% of the defense industrial base, including 90%-guaranteed Made in America loans for equipment. SBA release.
NAICS 336413, aircraft parts and auxiliary equipment, is one of ten "defense-critical" codes whose 8(a) applications SBA now reviews first, under the program's new rules. SBA guidance.
Budget context: FY2027 began on 1 October under a stopgap continuing resolution that runs to 11 December 2026 and holds most programs at FY2026 levels (CRS). Ongoing sustainment buying continues at that rate. New programs wait.
New awards for parts rose from $6.7B in FY2023 to $19.0B in FY2025. Across those three years the number of firms winning them went 3,018 → 3,008 → 2,970, and the number of separate awards fell slightly. The government is buying much more from the same set of firms, in bigger orders.
| Segment | FY23 $M | FY25 $M | Growth | Vendors FY23 → FY25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aircraft components & accessories 16xx | 2,240.9 | 5,618.6 | 2.5× | 1,343 → 1,361 |
| Engines & turbines 28xx | 1,942.7 | 5,123.2 | 2.6× | 629 → 649 |
| Parts coded by NAICS only 336412/3 | 1,105.4 | 3,379.8 | 3.1× | 1,208 → 1,224 |
| Airframe structural components 1560 | 851.8 | 2,883.2 | 3.4× | 661 → 650 |
| Engine accessories 29xx | 412.4 | 1,634.9 | 4.0× | 829 → 865 |
| Launch, landing & ground handling 17xx | 145.7 | 380.3 | 2.6× | 567 → 565 |
The Defense Logistics Agency wrote 107,994 of the 116,046 FY2025 parts awards. The military services write far fewer orders and much larger ones. The average Army parts award was about $7.4M; the average DLA award was about $61K.
In FY2025 the top five firms took 48.6% of parts dollars and the top ten took 59.5%. The top-five share dipped in FY2024 and then rose to its highest level of the three years. At the bottom, 732 firms won their first parts award in FY2025, a quarter of all winners, and together took 1.8% of the money.
| Rank | Firm (legal entity) | FY25 $M | Share | Awards | Buyers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lockheed Martin Corporation | 2,842.2 | 14.9% | 498 | 6 |
| 2 | General Electric Company | 2,286.2 | 12.0% | 481 | 8 |
| 3 | The Boeing Company | 2,107.8 | 11.1% | 3,734 | 7 |
| 4 | RTX Corporation | 1,305.9 | 6.9% | 616 | 4 |
| 5 | Honeywell International | 704.5 | 3.7% | 3,366 | 6 |
| 6 | Bell Boeing Joint Project Office | 608.7 | 3.2% | 1,101 | 2 |
| 7 | Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation | 494.0 | 2.6% | 13,743 | 6 |
| 8 | Rolls-Royce Corporation | 357.0 | 1.9% | 393 | 4 |
| 9 | L3Harris Technologies Integrated Systems | 347.4 | 1.8% | 19 | 3 |
| 10 | Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation | 261.4 | 1.4% | 891 | 3 |
For May–September 2026 we compared the text of all 14,122 parts notices against all 189,363 federal notices posted in the same window. Parts buyers are no more likely than average to report getting no offers. The constraint is who is allowed to win: the restriction to approved sources, and parts nobody makes any more.
| What the notice says | Parts | All federal | Ratio | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Award limited to approved / qualified sources (source approval request, QPL, source-controlled) | 33.9% | 16.0% | 2.1× | the gate |
| Part is obsolete or the maker has gone (DMSMS, "no longer manufactured") | 2.9% | 0.6% | 4.5× | vanishing vendors |
| Justification for other than full competition (J&A notice) | 2.1% | 1.4% | 1.4× | elevated |
| Small-business set-aside of any kind | 21.9% | 39.9% | 0.5× | half the norm |
| Sources Sought (buyer asking who exists) | 6.0% | 6.7% | 0.9× | normal |
| "No acceptable offers received" / re-solicited | 0.8% | 2.3% | 0.35× | below normal |
These are real notices from the last five months whose descriptions cite obsolescence or a vanished manufacturer. Most are DLA Sources Sought notices, meaning the government is asking in public whether anyone can still make the part.
| Part | Platform or engine | Notice |
|---|---|---|
| Transmission, mechanical (three part numbers) | B-1B bomber | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Rotor, fan; support, gearbox; case and vane assembly | F110 engine (F-15, F-16) | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Oil pump assembly; spray ring assembly | F100 engine (F-15, F-16) | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Cylinder assembly | J85 engine (T-38 trainer) | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Gearbox assembly | C-130 | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Temperature indicator | B-52 / C-135 | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Actuating cylinder; control gyroscope | F-15 / F-15E | DLA · Sources Sought |
| Center Console Refresh, Revision 2 | KC-135 tanker | Air Force · posted 40 times, May → Sep |
The Air Force names AI demand forecasting and additive manufacturing as part of its fix (Military Times). In the notices themselves, the change visible today is more basic: buyers asking firms to rebuild parts for which the government has no drawings.
A further 42 ask for reverse engineering outright. The Navy posts "in repair/modification of" requirements where the government lacks the data rights, and the Air Force is buying remanufactured B-52 electro-mechanical actuators. A firm that can measure, model and qualify an old part has something the original maker no longer sells.
Talk of 3D-printed spares is everywhere. Notices that actually mention additive manufacturing are rare. Qualification work such as the OU–ORNL program for the Air Force Sustainment Center is happening upstream of procurement. The buying has not caught up yet, so that gap is the opening.
Notices like the Navy's for an F/A-18E/F IRST fuel tank technical data package are built around the drawings themselves. A part with a releasable data package can be competed among qualified firms. A part without one stays with its original source until someone reverse-engineers it.
"Long-term contracts establishing multiple supply sources" is now stated Air Force policy. Expect more multi-award parts vehicles and fewer single-source renewals. That favors firms already holding one approved part number.
8,085 firms with active SAM registrations list an aircraft-parts NAICS code (336412 or 336413). Of them, 2,896 register as small and 696 as service-disabled veteran-owned. In FY2025, small firms in parts codes won 5.2% of parts dollars. Service-disabled veteran-owned firms won 0.70%.
| Group | Registered in parts codes | Won FY25 parts awards | FY25 $M | Share of $ | Gov-wide goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small business (in a parts or machining code) | 2,896 | 532 | 995.2 | 5.23% | 23% |
| Service-disabled veteran-owned (SDVOSB) | 696 | 153 | 132.5 | 0.70% | 5% |
| Veteran-owned, incl. SDVOSB | 1,080 | 272 | 289.4 | 1.52% | — |
| Women-owned | 1,128 | 401 | 450.2 | 2.37% | 5% |
| HUBZone (current certification) | 169 | 63 | 220.0 | 1.16% | 3% |
| 8(a) (current certification) | 108 | 22 | 64.2 | 0.34% | — |
The trend is flat. The small-business share of parts dollars went 4.61% → 5.15% → 5.23% from FY2023 to FY2025, and the SDVOSB share went 0.63% → 0.57% → 0.70%, while total spending nearly tripled. Small firms are holding share in a booming market, not gaining it.
Of the 14,122 parts notices, 21.9% carried a set-aside: 2,736 for small business, 178 for women-owned, 128 for SDVOSBs, 33 for 8(a) and 11 for HUBZone. 127 of the 128 SDVOSB set-asides came from DLA. For a veteran-owned manufacturer, DLA is effectively the only buyer setting this work aside. Of the 906 parts notices open today, 109 are small-business set-asides, 11 women-owned and 3 SDVOSB.
| Rank | SDVOSB-registered firm | State | FY25 $M | Awards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FBC Enterprises | AZ | 16.1 | 186 |
| 2 | AeroForce Logistics | WI | 15.7 | 467 |
| 3 | Apogee Worx | UT | 9.7 | 1 |
| 4 | Borsight | UT | 8.8 | 1 |
| 5 | Paradigm Parachute and Defense | FL | 8.6 | 8 |
| 6 | Statz Corp | WI | 6.3 | 148 |
| 7 | Janels Industries | MI | 5.9 | 103 |
| 8 | Union Machine Company of Lynn | MA | 5.8 | 29 |
A third of notices are gated to approved sources, and the gate is per part. A Source Approval Request for one national stock number (NSN) you can already make puts you on the short list every time DLA re-buys it. Volume is the norm: DLA posted 115 notices for fluid filter elements alone in five months.
Start with obsolescence Sources Sought notices, where the incumbent has already left.
Self-certification no longer qualifies for SDVOSB set-asides; SBA's VetCert does. DLA posted 127 of the 128 SDVOSB parts set-asides. If SDVOSBs reached their 5% government-wide goal in this market, that would be about $951M a year against today's $132.5M. The difference is $818M.
Aircraft parts (336413) is on SBA's ten-code priority list for 8(a) reviews. Today only 22 current 8(a) firms won parts awards and only 33 parts notices were 8(a) set-asides. Supply of certified firms is the limit, not demand, which is what the fast track is meant to change.
Five-axis machining, coordinate measuring machines and accredited special processes are the kind of capital a source approval tends to demand. SBA's 90%-guaranteed Made in America loans under the new commission are aimed at exactly that kind of spending.
The original manufacturers hold the long tail too: Sikorsky alone wrote 13,743 parts awards in FY2025. Their own supply chains face the same vanishing vendors, so a qualified second source is worth as much to them as to DLA.
Between April 2027 and March 2028, 10,405 parts contracts and orders held by 632 incumbents reach their current end date, carrying $7.12B. That window is 6–18 months out, when the next buy is still being shaped. Of these, 10,280 are under $10M and together carry $2.76B. Small firms hold 927 of the 10,405 ($417.4M).
| Rank | Incumbent | $M ending | Contracts | Buyers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RTX Corporation | 1,077.3 | 276 | 3 |
| 2 | Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation | 773.3 | 507 | 5 |
| 3 | General Electric Company | 611.1 | 167 | 6 |
| 4 | The Boeing Company | 566.1 | 1,910 | 6 |
| 5 | L3Harris Technologies Integrated Systems | 305.0 | 13 | 2 |
| 6 | Honeywell International | 301.7 | 311 | 6 |
| 7 | Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation | 217.2 | 472 | 2 |
| 8 | Lockheed Martin Corporation | 197.9 | 107 | 6 |
| 9 | Bell Boeing Joint Project Office | 197.9 | 337 | 3 |
| 10 | CFM International | 128.4 | 15 | 2 |
That count covers only new FY2025 awards, so it is a floor. The structural fact is the ratio: 2.8× the dollars and 1.6% fewer firms.
Top five at 48.6% and rising. But 732 firms won their first parts award in FY2025. They entered through small orders, not big contracts.
Approved-source restrictions run at 2.1× the federal rate, and obsolescence notices at 4.5×. Buyers get bids; they cannot buy from most of the firms bidding.
DLA buys a few hundred dollars at a time, part number by part number, and posted nearly every SDVOSB set-aside in this market. The registered bench is 2,896 small firms and 696 SDVOSBs.
The Smaller War Plants Commission (August), the 8(a) fast track for 336413 (September) and the Air Force's call for multiple sources (September) all point the same way. Firms that file Source Approval Requests now will be on the approved lists when $7.1B of contracts reach their end dates.
This report comes from FedSift's award and solicitation index, the same data capture teams use for recompete radar, incumbent analysis and Sources Sought tracking. It counts obligations only, never IDIQ ceilings.
Run the same analysis for your part numbers, PSC or NAICS code: which notices are open now, which are set aside for you, who holds the contracts ending in your window, and which buyers are asking for new sources.
FedSift Market Reports break down one federal market every other week. No. 01: Where the Drone Money Goes. See all reports.