Institute For Defense Analyses

Institute For Defense Analyses, a nonprofit Federally Funded Research and Development Center headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, provides policy research, strategic analysis, technical assessments, and test and evaluation services across defense, national security, science, technology, and public policy domains as a prime contractor to 63 distinct federal agencies. IDA operates without set-aside designations, reflecting its tax-exempt FFRDC status and trusted position across both defense and civilian agencies.

IDA's customer concentration is heavily weighted toward the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which accounts for 85 awards and $6.84 billion of the vendor's combined potential value—53% of the portfolio across recent activity. Beyond DoD, the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute), the National Science Foundation (Office of Integrative Activities), and the General Services Administration round out the top five funding agencies. The breadth is notable: IDA serves 63 agencies, but the top customer captures more than half of all potential value, creating significant concentration risk around OSD recompetes and task-order renewal cycles.

IDA's primary parent vehicles are the NSF-issued Indefinite Delivery Contract NSFOIA0408601 (234 task orders, $176.9 million combined potential value) and the General Services Administration Basic Ordering Agreement GS11B01417 (100 task orders, $256.2 million). The largest vehicle is IDA's single-award Indefinite Delivery Contract with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, valued at $1.424 billion and running through June 30, 2029. Under this FFRDC contract, IDA has received three major delivery orders since 2024: a $494.6 million order for research, development, and test and evaluation support extending through December 2029; a $219.4 million order for research and analysis to OSD and the Joint Staff through February 2028; and a $124.9 million order from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency through April 2028. Representative civilian work includes a $2.5 million delivery order from NSF's Office of Integrative Activities for AI research capacity analysis (completed February 2025), a $2.1 million order from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for risk management and lifecycle services (September 2025), and a $1.99 million order from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for office of science policy evaluation support (awarded September 2024, extending through September 2029).

Activity has moderated from the 2023 peak of 14 awards to five awards in 2025 and one in 2026 year to date, reflecting the shift toward larger, longer-duration FFRDC delivery orders under standing IDCs rather than numerous smaller awards. Thirteen awards carrying $728.3 million in combined potential value face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, creating recompete exposure tied primarily to OSD renewal cycles and NSF vehicle recompetes.

SCI-reported service-contract invoicing totaled $543 million across FY2022 through FY2024, with $184.8 million (436 FTEs) in FY2022, $223.8 million (495 FTEs) in FY2023, and $134.4 million (273 FTEs) in FY2024. The FY2024 decline reflects both contract closeouts and the shift toward larger task orders that may not complete within a single fiscal year. On federal service contracts captured in SCI, government-paid rates ran from a 10th percentile of $143.79 per hour to a median of $206.08 per hour, with senior labor reaching the 90th percentile of $418.80 per hour. IDA self-performs substantially all reported labor (zero percent sub-engagement by hours across prime contracts) and names only two subcontractors in SCI reporting; this contrasts with the prime-contract award descriptions, which reference specialized subcontractors including Aeris, Noblis, Lightcast, and Dell Federal Systems on higher-value FFRDC task orders for specialized capabilities such as atmospheric modeling, geospatial analysis, and software licensing.

The portfolio composition is weighted toward "All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services" (266 awards under NAICS 541990), reflecting IDA's research and analysis mission, alongside a secondary concentration in real-estate leasing (102 awards under NAICS 531110), likely tied to GSA facility-management arrangements. The top PSC categories are R&D-General Science/Technology (75 awards) and Lease/Rental of Office Buildings (55 awards), confirming the research-services and facility-overhead mix. IDA competes entirely as a prime; the vendor portfolio contains zero sub-awards, positioning IDA as an end-user organization rather than a feeder sub to larger contractors. This reflects the FFRDC model, where IDA operates as the research arm of sponsoring agencies rather than as a subcontractor on other primes' programs.