'War Dogs' and government procurement

[caption id=”attachment_22864” align=”alignnone” width=”1024”] Photo: U.S. Marines[/caption]

I’m late to the party on this, but finally watched War Dogs, and it’s the great American federal government procurement movie.

Based on a 2011 Rolling Stone article, “The War and the Dudes,” “War Dogs” chronicles how two twentysomethings, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, via their company, AEY Inc., venture into government contracting, supplying weapons and ammunition to the U.S. Department of Defense.

From “The War and the Dudes”:

At first, Packouz struggled to land his own deals. Bidding on contracts on fbo.gov was an art; closing a deal was a science. At one point, he spent weeks obsessing over an $8 million contract to supply SUVs to the State Department in Pakistan, only to lose the bid. But he finally won a contract to supply 50,000 gallons of propane to an Air Force base in Wyoming, netting a profit of $8,000. "There were a lot of suppliers who didn't know how to work FedBizOpps as well as we did," he says. "You had to read the solicitations religiously."

“War Dogs” exposes many of the nuances of federal contracting, from FedBizOps to bidding, small business set asides, contractor ratings to the unwritten rules that call vendor integrity into question.

Regardless of whether you’re interested in a comedic take on the business of war, there’s enough references to government contracting to make it fully entertaining for those of you who are proud procurement enthusiasts.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDnX2teGjKI