How do you do pricing research for defence contracts when data is so limited?

Question

Most standard pricing methods assume you have decent market data but that's pretty hard to come by in aerospace and defence. Curious how others have handled this.

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Fatima Al-Hassan · Answer

With defence contracts, I lean heavily on analogous pricing — finding historical contracts from USASpending.gov or FPDS that are structurally similar, then adjusting for scope and inflation. Cost-based modelling (bottoms-up cost buildup) is also standard when market comps just don't exist. Expert interviews with former procurement officers can fill a lot of gaps too — that tribal knowledge is often more valuable than any dataset.

How do you do pricing research for defence contracts when data is so limited?

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