Collection management, and what an intelligence requirement actually asks for
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance procurement is best read from the requirement backwards. A buyer states an information need -- what must be known, about what area, to what confidence, how often, and how quickly the answer must arrive -- and the acceptable solution is whatever meets it. That framing is deliberate: it lets an airborne sensor, a ground sensor network, a commercial imagery subscription or an analysis service compete for the same requirement, and it makes revisit rate and timeliness as important as resolution.
Service-based provision has grown to sit alongside equipment purchase. Buyers contract for collection delivered as a service -- flying hours, imagery tasking, persistent monitoring of a defined area -- which moves platform ownership, crewing, maintenance and obsolescence to the supplier and prices the capability by what is actually collected. The commercial terms then concern tasking priority, guaranteed availability windows, weather and serviceability exclusions, and what happens when the buyer's need and the supplier's other customers collide.
Handling the product is as specified as collecting it. Classification and releasability of derived material, retention periods, the accreditation of the systems the material is processed on, and the clearances held by analysts are all conditions of the contract, and they constrain where work may be performed. Interoperability is written in terms of recognised formats and metadata so that collected material can be exploited by tools the buyer already owns, which is the requirement most often omitted and most expensive to add afterwards.
This section describes how this category is bought generally, across the public buyers that publish it. The figures elsewhere on this page are measured for this market alone.
Who buys isr and surveillance in United States?
GlobalGov holds 77 isr and surveillance records from 46 distinct buying organisations in United States. The most frequent publishers are DLA Aviation at Oklahoma City, Ok (7 records); DLA Land and Maritime (7 records); DLA Land and Maritime (6 records); DLA Aviation (5 records); Centers For Disease Control-ghc (4 records); Department of Defense (4 records). Between them the 6 largest account for 43% of everything published, so buying here is spread across many separate authorities.
| Buying organisation | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| DLA Aviation at Oklahoma City, Ok | 7 | 9.1% |
| DLA Land and Maritime | 7 | 9.1% |
| DLA Land and Maritime | 6 | 7.8% |
| DLA Aviation | 5 | 6.5% |
| Centers For Disease Control-ghc | 4 | 5.2% |
| Department of Defense | 4 | 5.2% |
What are isr and surveillance contracts worth in United States?
15 of the 77 records publish a contract value. The median is $40.0M and the largest single published value is $861.2M. By size, 2 under $100k, 3 between $1M and $10M, 10 above $10M. The remaining 62 publish no value at all, so every figure here describes the priced subset only, and values are as stated by the buyer rather than as finally awarded.
| Contract size | Records | Share of priced |
|---|---|---|
| under $100k | 2 | 13% |
| between $100k and $1M | 0 | 0.0% |
| between $1M and $10M | 3 | 20% |
| above $10M | 10 | 67% |
How long do bidders get to respond to isr and surveillance tenders in United States?
Across the 68 United States isr and surveillance notices that publish both a publication date and a closing date, the median response window is 15 days. A quarter of them allowed 8 days or fewer and a quarter stayed open for more than 31. 29 of them (43%) closed within a fortnight of being published, so on this market a bidder who reviews notices once a week can lose most of the response window before reading one.
How often are isr and surveillance tenders published in United States?
United States publishes about 6 notices a month in this category, 70 in the last twelve months. Over the last three years there were 77, spread across 15 separate months of activity since 11 December 2023. April is historically the busiest month. The most recent was published 30 September 2026.
How does United States compare with other isr and surveillance markets?
Among the 8 countries where GlobalGov holds a comparable isr and surveillance market, United States ranks 4th by number of records. The largest is France (334 records against 77 here). Within United States itself, isr and surveillance is the 71st largest of the 85 procurement categories tracked here.
Where do the United States isr and surveillance records on this page come from?
These 77 records are collected from 4 official sources: SAM.gov (60), Simpler.Grants.gov (11), USAspending (4), Grants.gov (2). GlobalGov is an independent aggregator and is not affiliated with any of them; each record links back to the notice on its issuing portal. The set is rebuilt nightly, and the counts on this page were taken on 2026-10-01.
Open ISR and Surveillance tenders in United States
No individual notice in this category currently has a public record page. The market figures above are computed over all 77 records GlobalGov holds for it.
Other procurement categories in United States
ISR and Surveillance procurement in other markets
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