Reference — live procurement
RFQ 90MC0026Q0005: the Selective Service readiness simulation, in plain language
Published 25 July 2026. Everything below is read out of the solicitation documents themselves and cited to them. This page describes a federal procurement; it offers no advice to bidders, no assessment of any quotation, and no opinion about the outcome. DraftClock is not affiliated with the Selective Service System.
On 22 July 2026 the Selective Service System issued a request for quotations for something it has never had: a government-owned simulation of its own mobilization pipeline — a computer model of what would actually happen, day by day, if the United States restarted the draft.[1]
Search the solicitation number and you will find the SAM.gov listing and very little else. This page is a straight reading of the three documents in the package: the conformed solicitation, the Performance Work Statement, and Amendment 1.
1. The identifiers and the dates
The solicitation number is 90MC0026Q0005. It is printed in block 5 of the Standard Form 1449 cover page, in the running header of every page of the solicitation, in block 9A of the amendment, and in the filename of the government pricing sheet.[1][3] The amendment carries its own control number, 90MC0026Q00050001.
| Field | Value | Where it is stated |
|---|---|---|
| Solicitation number | 90MC0026Q0005 | SF1449 block 5 |
| Solicitation issue date | 22 July 2026 | SF1449 block 6 |
| Questions due | 28 July 2026, 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time | Solicitation provisions, para. i |
| Quotes due | 14 August 2026, 2:00 PM Eastern Time | SF1449 block 8; delivery instructions, para. j |
| Amendment 1 | Effective 23 July 2026; receipt date for offers not extended | SF30 blocks 3, 9B, 11 |
| Issuing and administering office | SSS National Headquarters, 1501 Wilson Blvd, Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22209 | SF1449 blocks 9, 16 |
| Method of solicitation | Request for Quote, under FAR Part 13.5 procedures | SF1449 block 14; instructions, para. f |
| Set-aside | Total small business set-aside, 100% | SF1449 block 10; Volume V instructions |
| NAICS / size standard | 541512 / $34,000,000 | SF1449 block 10 |
| Award | Single firm-fixed-price contract; government intends to award without discussions | 52.212-1 addendum, paras. b–d |
| Price validity | 120 calendar days from the due date | 52.212-1 addendum, para. a |
| Anticipated duration, initial delivery | 6–12 months, depending on validated requirements; period of performance set at task-order level | PWS §9.0 |
| Attachments | PWS (Atch 1), Past Performance Questionnaire (Atch 2), pricing sheet (Atch 3) | Section IV |
The cover page prints the offer due time as "2:00 EST" although 14 August falls in Eastern Daylight Time; the delivery instructions say "2:00PM Eastern Time (ET)". Both are quoted here as printed. The questions deadline is printed as "2:00PM Eastern Standard Time".
2. What is being bought
The Selective Service System executes its statutory mission through six Mission Essential Functions: Registration, Selection, Notification, Delivery, Classification, and the Alternative Service Program. The Performance Work Statement asks for a single model that covers all six, end to end.[2]
The requirement is unusually specific about the modelling approach:
- Discrete event simulation. The tool must "implement a discrete event simulation (DES) based representation" of all six functions, modelling "queues, routing, service times, and resource constraints."[2]
- Daily timestep, aggregate flows. The system shall "operate at daily timestep granularity (per-registrant microsimulation is out of scope)" and "ingest and use anonymized aggregate data only."[2]
- The behavioural quantities are named explicitly. The model must "represent MEPS throughput, no-shows, medical disqualification rates, claims processing, and ASP diversion" and support "surge, degraded operations, policy toggles, and stochastic behavior."[2]
- Monte Carlo and sensitivity analysis, scenario comparison, and a scenario library covering baseline, surge, degraded-operations and policy cases.[2]
- Staffing outputs by office. The model must map "workload and MEF responsibilities to specific SSS offices and Directorates, enabling the system to estimate office-level staffing demands required to execute mobilization tasks."[2]
- Dashboards and exports compatible with Excel, Power BI, CSV and PDF, plus "after-action reconstruction for historical or exercise-driven inputs."[2]
- Government ownership. Full source code, build pipelines, schema definitions, Infrastructure-as-Code Terraform artifacts and configuration files, delivered per commit to an SSS-maintained GitHub repository.[2]
- Security baseline. FISMA Moderate, NIST SP 800-53, FIPS 140-3, EO 14028, Section 508, OMB M-21-31 audit logging, Microsoft Entra ID (SAML 2.0) authentication with MFA on privileged access, SBOM, and SAST/DAST reporting.[2]
On commercial modelling packages, the PWS sets a licensing floor rather than a preference: if commercial off-the-shelf DES software is proposed, all licences must be identified and separately priced, "the Government shall not incur any licensing fees, subscriptions, or renewal costs unless such costs are explicitly disclosed, priced, and approved," the government must be able to "operate, modify, and sustain the RS without requiring contractor-exclusive development licenses," and the system must "remain functional and accessible without degradation if licenses are not renewed."[2]
3. The single most important sentence in the package
PWS §1.1 states the problem the agency is trying to solve: "SSS currently relies on manual analysis, legacy modeling approaches, outdated assumptions, and historical datasets that do not fully reflect modern demographics, communications channels, throughput constraints, or operational readiness conditions."[2]
§2.2 then says who has to fix that. Verbatim, the first two bullets of the Data, Scenario Modeling and Analytics Requirements — the Contractor shall:
"Identify, validate, and supply required data inputs, parameter sets, modeling assumptions, and industry benchmarks — recognizing that legacy SSS draft data may be outdated or unreliable"
"Document all data sources, benchmark methodologies, and parameter derivations to ensure transparency, repeatability, and defensibility of analytical outputs"[2]
Read plainly: validating the parameters is the contractor's job, not the government's. PWS §8.0 lists what the government furnishes — cloud environments, "relevant operational data, documentation, policies, and SME support", and access to SSS systems, facilities and equipment — while §2.2 puts the obligation to identify, validate and supply the inputs, parameter sets, assumptions and benchmarks, and to derive and document each one, on the contractor.[2] That obligation is carried into the deliverables twice over: a Comprehensive Data and Benchmark Justification Package is a required output of the Discovery Phase, before any implementation may begin, and a Data & Benchmark Validation Package ("Contractor-provided datasets, parameters, benchmark references, and methodology documentation") is a standing technical deliverable thereafter.[2]
Amendment 1 sharpened the same point in the schedule. Where CLIN 0001 and CLIN 0002 had described a "GFI data inventory and parameter review" and a "GFI parameter baseline" — GFI being government-furnished information — the amendment replaced those phrases with "data, inputs, and parameters review", "data, inputs, and parameters baseline" and "data, inputs, and parameters library established."[3]
4. The work, as scheduled
The base effort is five firm-fixed-price line items, each ending in a milestone the contracting officer's representative must approve before the next begins, with an estimated 10-business-day government review window at every gate.[1] One option line item follows.
| CLIN | Title | Principal content |
|---|---|---|
| 0001 | Environment Onboarding & Requirements Elicitation | Cloud access and security onboarding; Public Trust confirmation; stakeholder interviews across all six MEFs; data, inputs and parameters review; DES tool selection; FISMA control mapping and IATT package initiation |
| 0002 | Model Architecture & Core Prototype | DES architecture; Registration, Selection, Notification and Delivery prototyped; data, inputs and parameters library established; Entra ID / SAML 2.0 integrated; draft System Security Plan v1 |
| 0003 | Full Model Build | All six MEFs integrated, including Classification and ASP yield-diversion logic; scenario library; General and Special Skills selection; after-action reconstruction; sensitivity analysis; SSP v2 and initial SAST |
| 0004 | Dashboard, Analytics, Security Testing & Delivery | Dashboards and Excel/Power BI/PDF/CSV reporting; user-configurable parameter and scenario interface; DAST; POA&M; SBOM; model verification and validation certified by the COR and leadership; complete ATO package; full source delivery |
| 0005 | Formal Delivery & Government Acceptance | Government acceptance testing; written acceptance of all deliverables; base period complete |
| 1001 | Post-Delivery Support, Training & Knowledge Transfer (option) | Operator and administrator training; documentation package; scenario library expansion; model refinements; 90-day post-acceptance support |
Ongoing operation, maintenance and sustainment of the delivered model are stated to be outside this Performance Work Statement unless a future task order says otherwise.[2]
5. How quotations are to be evaluated
Quotations are submitted in five volumes — administrative, technical narrative (70 pages), past performance, price, and contract documentation — by email to the named contracting officer and contract specialist, with a 35 MB limit per message.[1] Award is on a best-value basis using three factors, and the relative weighting is stated in one sentence:
"Technical Capability and Demonstration, when combined with Past Performance, are significantly more important than Price. As quotations become more equal in technical merit and performance risk, Price will become increasingly important in the award decision."[1]
Two further provisions are stated on the face of the document. A vendor without a record of relevant past performance "will receive a neutral assessment and will not be evaluated either favorably or unfavorably." And the technical evaluation includes a live demonstration, conducted only for vendors the government invites.[1]
The demonstration is the part Amendment 1 changed. As originally issued, the evaluation section described a two-stage demonstration: Stage 1, a capability demonstration using government-provided guidance; Stage 2, an operational-scenario evaluation using "Government-developed operational scenarios representative of the agency's mission requirements."[1] Amendment 1 provides that vendors are instead "requested to use demonstration(s) of prior completed work, or notional example(s) comparable to Agency requirements," and that "with this revised approach, the demonstration evaluation is consolidated into one (1) demonstration phase."[3] The conformed document carries both passages: the consolidated single-phase description in the Volume II submission instructions, and the earlier two-stage description in the 52.212-2 evaluation addendum. Amendment 1 governs by its own terms; all other terms remain in full force and effect.[3]
Amendment 1 also replaced the named contract specialist and corrected the required email subject line. It did not extend the date for receipt of offers.
6. The procurement in context
This solicitation did not appear in a vacuum. The following is a dated sequence of documented events, each cited. It asserts no causal connection between any two of them.
| Date | Event | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Dec 2025 | Public Law 119-60 §535 enacted, striking and replacing section 3 of the Military Selective Service Act: every male citizen and every other male person residing in the United States between 18 and 26 "shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System" | Slip law[4] |
| 15, 27–29 Jan 2026 | Selective Service runs an internal Response Planning tabletop exercise on its own mobilization. The draft after-action report's bottom line: "an estimate of approximately 660 days for the Selective Service System to return to full operations from our existing state of readiness," and, separately, "The System currently does not have any planning COAs to guide a return to full operations" | ExPlan and draft AAR, released under FOIA[5][6] |
| 30 Mar 2026 | A proposed rule implementing automatic registration (RIN 3240-AA09) is reported submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs | Specialist tracker; single secondary source[7] |
| 22 Jul 2026 | RFQ 90MC0026Q0005 issued | SF1449 block 6[1] |
| 23 Jul 2026 | Amendment 1 effective. Separately, and reported by the same specialist tracker, the proposed automatic-registration rule is withdrawn from OIRA review without explanation | SF30 block 3[3]; secondary source for the withdrawal[7] |
| 24 Jul 2026 | Primary registries checked: the Federal Register has published nothing for RIN 3240-AA09 and nothing for the agency in 2026; regulations.gov shows no 2026 docket; OIRA's pending-review list carries 97 rules government-wide and none belonging to Selective Service | Archived API responses and OIRA listing[8] |
| 28 Jul 2026 | Deadline for vendor questions on the solicitation | Solicitation provisions[1] |
| 14 Aug 2026 | Deadline for quotations | SF1449 block 8[1] |
| 18 / 19 Dec 2026 | Automatic registration takes effect. §535(c): "The amendments made by this section shall take effect one year after the date of the enactment of this Act" — enactment was 18 December 2025. The agency's own Unified Agenda abstract says 19 December 2026, twice. Both readings are on the record | Slip law and Unified Agenda[4][8] |
On the two July dates: the 22 July issue date is primary — it is stamped in block 6 of the solicitation's own cover form. The 23 July withdrawal date is single-source secondary, from a specialist tracker. What is independently confirmed by primary records is the state of affairs on 24 July: no rule published, none pending at OIRA. We state the sequence and stop there.
7. What the public record does not contain
The PWS asks the eventual contractor to model no-shows, medical disqualification rates, claims processing and Alternative Service diversion. Three specific silences in the public record bear on that, and each is documented in our own coverage notes rather than asserted:
- No published no-show, claim or appeal rates in Selective Service planning documents. The agency's plans document the machinery of classification and appeals exhaustively — every form, every 10- and 15-day window, every routing path — and nowhere state how many people are expected to flow down each branch. Area Office staffing is driven by registrant count, not by expected claim count. The 2020 national commission corpus is the same: no claim rate, no appeal rate, no per-board caseload, no conscientious-objector claim rate.[9][10]
- The 193-day delivery figure has left the budget record. A text search of every archived Selective Service congressional budget justification finds "193" in FY2012 through FY2020 and in none from FY2021 through FY2027. The FY2027 justification instead commits the agency to "Maintain the Integrated Master Mobilization Schedule (IMMS)."[11]
- The Integrated Master Mobilization Schedule is not published. It is now the operative planning artifact named in the agency's budget request, and no version of it is in the public record.[11]
We keep a public list of the documents that would close these gaps, with the request letters written out in full: the missing documents →
8. Why this page exists
This site is an independent public implementation of substantially the scope this solicitation describes: a daily-timestep discrete-event model of all six Mission Essential Functions, driven by an 81-entry parameter ledger in which every entry carries its source and a reliability grade, with Monte Carlo replication, an interactive public simulator, and historical backtests published together with their failures. It was built without government funding; as of publication we have not submitted a quotation in response to this solicitation. Organisations working in this area — agencies, prospective vendors, journalists, researchers — can reach us at contact@draftclock.org; the engine and the parameter ledger are available for licensing or collaboration.
To be unambiguous. Nothing on this page suggests a draft is planned, imminent or likely. No induction authority is in force; Congress would have to amend the Military Selective Service Act and the President would have to sign it. Buying a readiness model is a planning activity, and the Department of Defense has stated repeatedly that it "currently has no operational plans that envision mobilization at a level that would require conscription."
Sources
Every item below is a document held in this project's archive; the archive path is given so that any figure on this page can be traced to the file it was read from. Solicitation documents were obtained from SAM.gov.
- Selective Service System, Solicitation 90MC0026Q0005, Readiness Simulation
(conformed, 16 pp. plus attachments), issued 22 July 2026. Standard Form 1449 cover page,
blocks 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14 and 16; Section II CLIN structure (pp. 3–7); Section V
solicitation provisions — 52.212-1 addendum paragraphs a–d and f, submission
instructions paragraphs b, i, j and k; 52.212-2 addendum, basis for award and evaluation
factors, including the two-stage demonstration description and the neutral past-performance
provision.
docs/rfq/SSS_RFQ_conformed.pdf,docs/rfq/SSS_RFQ_conformed.txt. SAM.gov - Selective Service System, Readiness Simulation Performance Work Statement,
Attachment 1, dated 23 July 2026. §1.0 (six Mission Essential Functions); §1.1
(background, "outdated assumptions"); §2.1 (DES representation, queues, routing, MEPS
throughput, no-shows, disqualification rates, claims processing, ASP diversion); §2.2
(data, scenario modelling and analytics requirements — the "outdated or unreliable"
clause); §2.3 and §3.0 (security, daily timestep, aggregate data, office-level
staffing, source code and Terraform); §3.1 (COTS licensing); §4.0 (Discovery
Phase and the Comprehensive Data and Benchmark Justification Package); §5.2 and
§5.3 (deliverables); §8.0 (government-furnished information); §9.0 (period
of performance, 6–12 months).
docs/rfq/SSS_PWS.pdf,docs/rfq/SSS_PWS.txt - Selective Service System, Amendment of Solicitation 90MC0026Q00050001,
Standard Form 30, effective 23 July 2026. Block 3 (effective date); block 9A/9B (solicitation
amended and its date); block 11 (receipt of offers not extended); block 14 and the attached
summary of changes (subject line, contract specialist, CLIN 0001 and 0002 phrasing, and the
consolidation of the demonstration evaluation into one phase).
docs/rfq/SSS_Amendment1.pdf,docs/rfq/SSS_Amendment1.txt - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, Pub. L. No. 119-60,
§535, 139 Stat. 871–872 (Dec. 18, 2025), codified at 50 U.S.C. §3802.
Operative text at §535(a); effective date at §535(c).
corpus/autoreg_rule/raw/PLAW-119publ60.pdf,corpus/autoreg_rule/raw/sec535_text.txt. congress.gov - Selective Service System, 2026 Response Planning ExPlan, 1 October 2025
(17 pp., redacted), released under FOIA: exercise dates, scenario, and the M+16 specialised
lottery.
corpus/foia_explan/raw/20-2026_Response_Planning_EXPLAN_Redacted.pdf - Selective Service System, Response Planning Exercise After Action Report
(draft, redacted, 6 pp.), 2026: the 660-day bottom line and the enclosure list at PDF p. 1;
"does not have any planning COAs" at PDF p. 2; required decisions at PDF p. 3. Pages 3–6
are withheld in substance under exemption (b)(5).
corpus/foia_explan/raw/24-Draft_Response_Planning_AAR_Redacted.pdf - Edward Hasbrouck, resisters.info, "Transition from self-registration to automatic
registration" (archived 24 July 2026): submission of the proposed rule to OIRA on 30 March
2026 and its withdrawal on 23 July 2026 "without explanation." Single secondary
source for both dates; see source [8] for what the primary record independently
confirms.
corpus/autoreg_rule/raw/hasbrouck_transition.html - Primary regulatory record, retrieved and archived 24 July 2026: Federal Register API
for RIN 3240-AA09 (count: 0) and for Selective Service documents
published in 2026 (count: 0); regulations.gov v4 agency listing,
newest document 17 December 2025; OIRA EO 12866 pending-review list, 97 rules and none with
the Selective Service prefix 3240. Unified Agenda entry RIN 3240-AA09 supplies the agency's
own "effective December 19, 2026" wording.
corpus/autoreg_rule/raw/fr_rin_aa09.json,corpus/autoreg_rule/raw/oira_pending.html,corpus/autoreg_rule/rule_extract.md - DraftClock corpus coverage note on the FOIA-released Selective Service planning
documents, gap #2: "No ASP diversion rate, claim-filing rate, appeal rate, or MEPS
disqualification rate… SSS plans capacity to process claims… without ever
modeling claim volume."
corpus/foia_explan/COVERAGE.md - DraftClock corpus coverage note on the 2020 National Commission on Military,
National, and Public Service document set, §4.3 "Classification and appeals throughput
— entirely absent."
corpus/ncmnps/COVERAGE.md - Selective Service System, Congressional Budget Justifications, FY2011
through FY2027, machine text search: "193" present FY2012–FY2020, absent
FY2021–FY2027; the FY2027 justification, Strategic Objective 1.1, "Maintain the
Integrated Master Mobilization Schedule (IMMS)." The full year-by-year count is published on
the missing-documents page.
corpus/sss_official/raw/CBJ_FY2027.pdf,corpus/sss_official/text/. sss.gov/cj
Corrections are welcome and will be published on this page with the date they were made. Contact: contact@draftclock.org.