Clauses · DFARS · Supply chain and sourcing
DFARS 252.211-7008 Use of Government-Assigned Serial Numbers
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
252.211-7008 carries no flow-down paragraph, and 211.274-5(b) prescribes it for contracts, not for subcontracts. It reaches you as a passenger of DFARS 252.211-7003, which does carry a mandate: 7003(g) requires the contractor, where it acquires by subcontract an item for which item unique identification is required under 7003(c)(1), to include 7003 — 'including this paragraph (g)' — in the applicable subcontracts, expressly including subcontracts for commercial products or commercial services. So the honest verdict is: no regulatory mandate for 7008 itself, but a real mandate for the clause it depends on, and primes flow the pair together so the Government-assigned serial number and the UII on the same item stay consistent. 7 of 43 corpus documents do exactly that, including all four Northrop CTM-P-ST templates (r05-26) and both GDMS non-commercial templates dated 2026-07-20.
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition SEP 2010 (no alternates; page compiled at DFARS Change 5/7/2026, effective 2026-05-07) · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
2 items for your checklist, slowest first.
A program you have to be running
You are either running it or you are not, and what the prime asks for is the date it started.
A marking process putting the Government's own serial number on each major end item, in the place and by the method the contract's technical instructions name
DFARS 252.211-7008(b)
A state you have to be in, in a government system
The record has to be posted before the prime can see it, and posting is not the same day as being ready.
That serial number registered against the item's unique identifier at the time of delivery, in the registry the contract routes it to
DFARS 252.211-7008(c)
When it is used
Two conditions, both from DFARS 211.274-5(b): the contract contains DFARS 252.211-7003 (Item Unique Identification and Valuation), AND the contract requires the contractor to mark major end items under its terms and conditions. The clause has no threshold of its own — the money test lives in 252.211-7003 (already in the base): $5,000 or more unit acquisition cost, plus serially managed, mission essential, controlled inventory, and items the CO designates below $5,000 under 211.274-5(a)(1). 211.274-5(b) expressly reaches 'solicitations and contracts using FAR part 12 procedures for the acquisition of commercial products and commercial services', and DFARS 212.301(f)(v)(B) repeats it. 'Major end item' is defined narrowly in (a): a final combination of parts or materials ready for its intended use and important enough to operational readiness to need life-cycle inventory control — aircraft, ships, boats, motorized wheeled/tracked/towed vehicles, weapon and missile end items, ammunition, and sets, assemblies or end items having a major end item as a component. A machine shop making a component is normally outside it unless the deliverable is itself an assembly containing a major end item.
Read closely
(d) has the unique item identifier hold for the whole life of the item, so the numbering scheme is settled once rather than order by order, and it may be built out of the Government-assigned serial number. This clause sets no deadline of its own; the deadline is the one in 252.211-7003, at delivery.
The 6 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, DFARS 252.211-7008, DFARS 211.274-5, DFARS 212.301(f)(v)(A)-(B), and DFARS 252.211-7003 (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.