The Space Force has to tear up a task order worth a slice of its $5.7 billion enterprise IT contract after the Government Accountability Office ruled the work was never supposed to be ordered that way in the first place. GAO sustained a protest from the small business that lost the work, and told the Space Force to kill the order and start over with a real competition.
GAO decided the case, B-424548, B-424548.2 and B-424548.3, on Sept. 3, 2026, and released it publicly on Sept. 9. The protester, Ares Enterprise, LLC, a small business in Fairfax, Virginia, challenged a task order the Space Force and Air Force issued to Vision Information Technology Consultants LLC, of San Antonio, Texas, under the Enterprise IT as a Service (EITaaS) Wave 1 blanket purchase agreement, a single-award vehicle worth $5.7 billion over 10 years. The order covers IT support for the 61st Communications Squadron at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California — work Ares had been doing as a subcontractor to Trace Systems under an Army RS3 task order that wound down through a series of one-month bridge contracts ending May 31, 2026.
Why the LAAFB Work Didn't Fit the EITaaS Contract
GAO sustained the protest on two separate grounds. First, it found the tasks laid out in the LAAFB order's performance work statement — network and system operations and maintenance, cybersecurity governance, IT planning, engineering, records management, and threat and intelligence support — go well beyond what the EITaaS BPA actually covers. The BPA's own performance work statement limits the vehicle to end-user device support and enterprise help desk services, nothing close to the breadth of work the Space Force tried to order through it. As GAO put it in the decision, "our review shows that LAAFB PWS 2.4 is not within the scope of the EITaaS BPA." GAO added that its review of the record "does not support the contracting officer's determination of the scope of the EITaaS BPA."
Second, GAO found the agency never checked whether the work matched the labor categories in Vision's own General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule contract, the underlying vehicle the EITaaS BPA sits on top of. That is not a paperwork footnote — FSS ordering rules require the tasks an agency buys to line up with the labor categories the schedule holder is actually authorized to sell, and GAO found the contracting officer skipped that check entirely before sending the work to Vision.
Why GAO Tossed the Agency's CACI Defense
The Space Force tried to defend its scope reading by pointing to briefing materials from CACI, the lead contractor on EITaaS Wave 1. GAO wasn't persuaded. The decision notes CACI was "describing the scope of its own BPA" in those materials, not offering an independent read of what the contract covers — a distinction that mattered because CACI has its own financial stake in how broadly the EITaaS vehicle gets interpreted. The agency also argued Ares's protest was untimely and that Ares wasn't even an interested party to bring it; GAO rejected both defenses and let the protest proceed on the merits. Ares, for its part, argued Vision's task order gave CACI an improper organizational conflict of interest. GAO flatly rejected that theory, finding no support for it in the record — the protest succeeded on the scope and labor-category grounds alone, not on any conflict-of-interest claim.
What Happens to Vision's Task Order Now
Because the agency had already invoked its authority under 31 U.S.C. § 3554(b)(2) to let Vision keep working through the protest, GAO couldn't simply void the order — it had to recommend a fix instead. GAO's recommendation was direct: "We therefore recommend that the agency terminate the LAAFB order issued to Vision and issue a new solicitation to meet its requirements consistent with the rules for full and open competition." GAO also ordered the Space Force to reimburse Ares for the cost of pursuing the protest, including reasonable attorneys' fees. GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez signed off on the outcome in three words that settle the matter: "The protest is sustained."
That means Vision's work at Los Angeles Air Force Base ends, and the Space Force has to build a new, competed solicitation for the 61st Communications Squadron's network operations, cybersecurity governance, and engineering support rather than routing it through EITaaS again. Ares, whose incumbent work ended when the Army bridge contracts ran out, gets another shot at the requirement — this time through a competition rather than a sole-source-style task order under someone else's BPA.
What It Means for Contractors
The decision draws a hard line for anyone holding a BPA, GWAC, or other multi-award IT vehicle: a task order's tasks have to match the underlying contract's actual performance work statement, not the broadest interpretation a program office can argue for after the fact. EITaaS Wave 1 was built for end-user device support and help desk work; the Space Force cannot use it as a backdoor to re-source network operations, cybersecurity governance, or engineering work that belongs in a full and open competition. Contracting officers ordering off FSS-based BPAs also now have a clearer paper trail requirement — GAO expects them to actually verify that ordered work maps to the awardee's approved labor categories, not assume it does.
The ruling also warns program offices against leaning on a lead contractor's own briefing materials to justify scope decisions. CACI sits atop EITaaS Wave 1 and has an obvious interest in how expansively the vehicle gets read; GAO treated that interest as a reason to discount CACI's account rather than rely on it. Incumbents displaced by bridge-contract expirations and follow-on awards elsewhere in the enterprise — a pattern likely to recur as the Pentagon consolidates IT support under omnibus vehicles like EITaaS — now have a concrete precedent for challenging task orders that quietly expand beyond what the parent contract was ever competed to cover.
