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Omni acquires synaptic intelligence tool developer

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:57:17 -0400

Omni has acquired an artificial intelligence company that developed a platform to use brain-like techniques in helping operators and enterprise organizations make decisions.

Nara Logics opened for business in 2011 to build virtual AI advisers that provide real-time and explainable recommendations across different data environments. The company does this by leaning on synaptic intelligence, which refers to how the brain stores memories and learns without forgetting the past.

By acquiring Nara Logics, Omni is looking to further build out its software offerings for decision pipelines in classified and other operational settings. Financial terms of the transaction announced Tuesday were not disclosed.

Analysts, operators and commanders are in the intended user base for Nara Logics’ Synaptic Intelligence Platform. The idea is to provide them with an explainable AI offering that completes the data processing cycle.

Nathan Wilson, one of the original cofounders of Nara Logics in 2011, is a research scientist from MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences that designed the platform architecture to operate in a similar manner to biological neural structures.

The company describes the platform’s current user base as including financial and government analysts, who are responsible for processing multi-source data and prioritizing events in context.

Omni is owned by Madison Dearborn Partners, which acquired the software integrator in the summer of 2024.

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Mach Industries hauls in $300M to move on second-generation systems

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:55:44 -0400

Mach Industries, a maker of unmanned and other defense systems, has fetched $300 million in Series C capital from investors to aid efforts in expanding manufacturing capacity and partnerships with military forces.

The company opened for business in 2022 and has five vehicles under development with plans in place to start producing at least three of them this year. In April, Mach Industries acquired solid rocket motor manufacturer Exquandrum in order to gain greater control over SRM supply chains and directly incorporate energetics system development processes.

New investors Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital led the Series C round announced Tuesday, which values Mach Industries at a touted $1.8 billion. Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures are returning investors.

Mach Industries intends to use this new capital to expand its Forge manufacturing network, further advance its propulsion capabilities and move to develop second-generation systems. The company also is looking to expand its work with military organizations such as the Army, Air Force, Special Operations Command and allied forces.

Some examples of platforms made by Mach Industries include Viper, a vertical-takeoff strike vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider built to launch weapons; and Stratos, an airborne satellite platform for surveillance.

Mach Industries also manufactures the Dart counter-drone interceptor and Pike, a long-range strike munition.

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KBR wins $8B Antarctica research recompete

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:21:42 -0400

KBR has won a 20-year, $8 billion contract to step in as the National Science Foundation’s main industry partner for scientific research support services in Antarctica.

NSF awarded this recompete of its Antarctic Science and Engineering Support Contract on Tuesday and received four proposals, according to Sam.gov records.

The NSF-led U.S. Antarctic Program has been active since 1959 in operating three year-round stations, two research vessels and several other research camps across the region.

This includes the coastal McMurdo station and Amudsen-Scott base right at the South Pole, where winter temperatures can plunge to -40 degrees Fahrenheit and darkness covers the region all day.

In taking over the ASESC contract, KBR’s Antarctica team will support all scientific missions and experiments at the stations and other field sites across the continent.

KBR will also be responsible for logistics operations across key gateways and port locations, including cold chain handling of scientific samples from Antarctica back to U.S. laboratories.

“Antarctica is more than ice — it’s a living laboratory where the past, present and future of our planet converge. Renowned for its isolation, Antarctica serves as a hub for innovative scientific discovery,” Doug Hill, president of KBR’s readiness and sustainment business unit, said in a release.

KBR’s capture of the ASESC contract comes at a critical juncture for its government services segment as it prepares to be a standalone public company.

KBR executives announced that spinoff plan in September and reiterated their intention to do so in a May 5 earnings call with investors, during which CEO Stuart Bradie said everyone involved is working toward Jan. 4 as the effective date.

Leidos is the long-time incumbent for ASESC, having inherited the work in 2016 through its merger with the Lockheed Martin IS&GS services unit that originally captured the contract in 2011.

But in June 2025, Leidos’ chief growth officer Jason Albanese told us that the company elected not to pursue the recompete. Leidos decided the program no longer fit into the current iteration of its strategy and vision called NorthStar 2030.

NSF has obligated roughly $3.1 billion in task order volume against the current contract to-date ahead of the scheduled Sept. 30 completion date, according to GovTribe data.

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VA seeks contractor to tackle 10 years of ad-hoc automation

Nick Wakeman — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:48:55 -0400

Infrastructure teams across the Veterans Affairs Department have developed thousands of ad-hoc automation scripts over the past decade, while also having adopted inconsistent infrastructure and configuration management practices.

The cumulative result of this patchwork is technical debt that increases risk, security exposure, labor costs and delays in delivering for critical veteran services.

VA outlines these challenges in a new request for information posted Wednesday for the Infrastructure Operations – Data Center and Cloud Engineering Infrastructure Automation Technical Debt Reduction program.

VA wants to develop a contract for an enterprise automation control plane that standardizes, governs and operationalizes infrastructure automation across the department.

The potential contract will likely be a five-year effort covering 128,000 managed endpoints in VA’s hybrid IT environment. The prime contractor will work with a commercial automation platform.

The prime contractor will develop reference architectures, automation standards, policy taxonomies and reusable building blocks to help VA's infrastructure teams adopt standardized practices across the department.

The department also wants the contractor to transfer the knowledge and practices to VA personnel so they can independently operate and further develop the platform.

The contract will be a mixture of software and professional services. VA has not decided on a contract structure yet, though software purchases will be on a fixed-price basis.

For the professional services portion, VA asks respondents to choose among different contracts structures. This includes fixed price, cost-reimbursement, labor-hour, time-and-materials, or other. Respondents can also choose a hybrid approach by picking more than one.

VA also has not disclosed a dollar value on the potential contract.

Responses to the RFI are due June 12. VA is targeting a Sept. 30 award for the contract

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GSA publishes ‘Elimination, Optimization and Automation’ playbook for government agencies

Frank Konkel — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration published a new playbook Wednesday to provide federal agencies and executives tools, strategies and a modern blueprint to automate repetitive tasks and give employees time back to perform mission-critical work.

The Elimination, Optimization and Automation playbook, developed by GSA, builds on lessons learned from federal pilots, mature automation programs and the agency’s own extensive internal enterprise efforts to improve operations.

While a new product, the playbook is already foundational to the agency’s moonshot goal to save and automate 1 million hours of workload for its staff—a goal it’s more than halfway toward achieving, according to GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch.

Yet Lynch said there’s tremendous potential value in taking what’s worked at GSA and “putting those best practices out back to the broader federal government,” with many agencies grappling with similar problems. In this way, he said GSA is serving as a force multiplier for other agencies.

“I think from what I've seen, at least working in government, is so many of the challenges [agencies] are trying to solve are incredibly consistent,” Lynch said in a recent interview with Government Executive. “So there may be unique nuances based on the mission of the agency, but everyone's trying to understand how to deploy technology and use AI and drive efficiencies within our workflows.”

“We just don't have to start from go every time,” Lynch added. “There are learnings that we can provide from our experience at GSA, where we've had a more formalized process that allows other parts of the government to go faster and better. Hopefully, the results we’ve been able to produce through these types of programs makes it compelling and something that other agencies can use as appropriate within their groups.”

A copy of the 37-page playbook viewed by Government Executive includes best practices based on technology implementation efforts at GSA and a handful of other agencies, including NASA and the Education Department, during this administration as well as the previous Trump administration. Collectively, the handbook “is formatted to follow a typical EOA project through its lifecycle, from ideation to deployment.”

It outlines a multi-phased approach to EOA projects — opportunity assessments, solution planning and design, implementing and sustaining — as well as an EOA toolkit with tools and templates “to help accelerate your agency’s launch of an effective EOA initiative.”

The playbook lists Lynch, GSA Chief Financial Officer Nimisha Agarwal and Larry Allen, Associate Administrator of the Office of Government Policy as executive sponsors; Chris Grigsby, Executive Director of Digital Finance, Mehul Parekh, Principal Deputy Associate Administrator of OGP, Anthony Cavallo, Division Director of the Business Modernization Division, and program analysts Gabrielle Perret and Will Spelker as EOA subject matter experts; and Andy Stegmaier, President of Management Science & Innovation and Nick Surkamp, Chief Delivery Officer of Management Science & Innovation as EOA playbook authors.

“It is incredible the work the team has done to set this up and provide a top-down framework for the program,” Lynch said.

Once published, Lynch said the next step is evangelizing the playbook across government. Internally, those efforts began with a May 12 Emerging Tech Showcase held at GSA’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and attended virtually by more than 2,000 people. The showcase featured several panels on the playbook featuring many of its contributors, as well as panels on GSA’s internal AI-powered chat platform, AI use cases across the agency and an industry-focused panel.

Lynch said he hopes to host a governmentwide showcase with an even larger audience sometime in July.

Other ‘force multipliers’ at GSA

Lynch said governmentwide demand for USAi has increased steadily since GSA launched the shared service to streamline AI adoption last August. Thus far, the agency has inked 24 agency agreements with USAi with 40 more in the works. Another 82 agencies have asked for demos of the technology available on USAi.

“USAi continues to be a really strong platform for us that's meant to be in very similar fashion to the EOA playbook, where we're trying to host and help provide a safe sandbox for other agencies to start to explore how they deploy AI within their workflows,” Lynch said.

Another governmentwide program, OneGov, has generated some $1.15 billion in savings through negotiated discounts on a variety of AI and software tools using the collective power of the entire federal government. More than two dozen companies, including most leading AI firms, are selling their software at a discounted price to agencies through OneGov. In total, nearly 3.4 million users across government have access to that software through OneGov.

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Army seeks contractor support for war planning, medical logistics

Nick Wakeman — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:34:15 -0400

The Army Materiel Command is in the research phase of a contract for strategic planning and medical logistics support.

A new request for information posted Tuesday describes the Army’s need for support planning functions across several areas – medical supply chain and logistics, equipment readiness and distribution, and liaison officers embedded at major Army commands.

The potential contract would also support strategic planning that feeds into Army operations and war gaming exercises.

The RFI is labeled as “strategic planning and medical” support and is focused on ensuring logistics can sustain forces in a conflict.

The Army is planning for a contract with a 9-month base period, plus four individual option years and a six-month extension.

While the contract structure is still to be determined, the Army says it will likely need annual labor hours in the 57,000-to-66,000 range. The Army also wants to build in surge capacity of another 9,600 hours.

The RFI recognizes that the Army needs more contractor support to anticipate stresses on the supply chain and balance that against mission requirements.

Responses to the RFI are due June 15.

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OPM moves one step closer to HR system overhaul for 2 million federal workers

Nick Wakeman — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:14:01 -0400

With one protest withdrawn and a second one denied, the Office of Personnel Management is now free to move forward with its plan to award a 10-year contract to modernize the government’s human resource systems.

OPM released the final solicitation in October for the Federal HR 2.0 contract to modernize systems that cover 2 million employees across the government. The agency wants a single integrated platform that will be the infrastructure for a more data-driven federal HR ecosystem, according to solicitation documents.

Bidders had to submit proposals by Oct. 31 and OPM followed a two-step process for evaluation. After step one, IBM Corp. and then Economic Systems Inc. filed their protests.

IBM filed its protest on Feb. 25 but withdrew without explanation on April 3. Meanwhile, Economic Systems filed a protest on March 2. On Monday, the Government Accountability Office posted on its public docket that it had denied Economic Systems protest.

OPM could not make an award while the protests were active, but it could continue to evaluate proposals. Now it can pick a winner with the protests out of the way.

While no dollar value has been disclosed, the undertaking is massive.

OPM wants the platform to have functions such as position management, personnel action, records processing, workforce analytics, and employee and manager self-service capabilities.

The agency will pick a winner based on four technical factors including past experience and solution readiness, a written implementation approach, systems testing, and a virtual live demonstration.

Last year, OPM awarded a sole-source contract to Workday to fast-track the modernization effort. OPM later rescinded it amid criticism and instead moved to create the current solicitation for a broader, government-wide solution.

Workday is one of several companies in the running for Federal HR 2.0. An award could come anytime this month, according to GovTribe data.

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CMS chooses finalists for Medicare claims processing competition

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:10:34 -0400

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has selected two companies to vie for a potential seven-year contract to help stand up a new software system for processing and adjudicating Medicare claims.

HealthEdge Software and Peraton will move forward with demonstrations and experiments of their prototype solutions through a series of challenges. CMS sees the future ClaimsCore system as supporting more than 2 million active users and processing more than 100,000 claims per day.

HealthEdge’s portion of the contract has an initial $2.5 billion obligation and a $1.1 billion ceiling. Peraton’s allocation was initially obligated $9.1 million and has a potential value of $825 million, CMS said in a pair of award notices Monday.

Solicitation documents released in March describe how CMS set up the three-phase competition to evaluate how bidders’ solutions can adjudicate the claims, deliver outputs consistent with legacy results and provide transparent explanations in the event of variances.

CMS will eventually choose a single integrator that will be tasked with helping the agency bring together the responsibilities of four legacy systems, which were originally built in the 1970s, into a single environment for managing claims.

The final request for proposals did not explicitly state a timeline for that decision, but does point to Jan. 1, 2027 as the initial base period’s end date.

CMS’ statement of objectives for ClaimsCore lays out 11 primary goals in this effort to replace the legacy systems, which were built on COBOL and IBM mainframes. The systems currently process 1.2 billion claims per year, amounting to around $460 billion in payments.

Reduced provider burdens, flexibility, interoperability, elastic scaling, and consolidated development and operations are among those objectives. Ensuring payment integrity is also a cornerstone of ClaimsCore with the goal of reducing fraud, waste and abuse.

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Valiant Solutions adds AI functions, threat emulation work via acquisition

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:09:46 -0400

Valiant Solutions has moved on a second acquisition in six months as the cybersecurity specialist continues to build out its technology offerings and presence across the national security community.

BreakPoint Labs opened for business in 2015 to help Defense Department agencies and large commercial customers secure their tech environments, including complex research systems and others that depend on cyber performance.

By acquiring BreakPoint, Valiant adds more artificial intelligence functionality and threat emulation work into its cyber operation offerings. Terms of the transaction announced Tuesday were not disclosed.

Valiant is also using this move to expand its portfolio in operational technology security, penetration testing and the DevSecOps software development practice.

“Modern cyber missions increasingly require more than traditional cybersecurity support and compliance services,” Valiant CEO George Wilson said in a release. “Organizations need deeply technical partners capable of integrating AI-enabled cyber operations, automation, engineering, and mission expertise across highly complex environments.”

This acquisition follows Valiant’s purchase in February of Abile Group, which focuses on endpoint protection and network engineering efforts in cyber.

Valiant is owned by Bluestone Investment Partners, which acquired the company in late 2024.

Piper Sandler & Co. was the sell-side financial adviser and Miles & Stockbridge worked as legal counsel to BreakPoint Labs. Holland & Knight LLP acted as legal counsel to Valiant Solutions.

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Trump signs AI executive order after postponement last month

Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:02:00 -0400

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a cybersecurity-focused artificial intelligence executive order directing national security and civilian agencies to expand oversight of advanced AI systems, marking the administration’s latest attempt to balance growing fears over catastrophic AI-enabled cyber risks with a broadly pro-innovation agenda.

The directive scales down the degree of federal oversight of AI models from what was initially included in an earlier version that was set to be signed two weeks ago, but that signing was postponed amid overregulation concerns from industry.

Per the order, companies developing cutting-edge AI systems would be encouraged to provide the federal government with 30 days of pre-public access to those models, as well as limited early access for select critical infrastructure operators. An earlier outline of the order viewed by Nextgov/FCW suggested the government would be granted a longer window of 90 days to assess covered frontier models.

The more limited pre-release access period, coupled with language in the order that explicitly prohibits licensing or preclearance requirements, suggests the administration is seeking visibility into advanced AI systems without establishing a formal approval process before companies can release new models, a dynamic that is more favorable to industry.

One section of the order, focused on cybersecurity, directs federal agencies to secure Defense Department and other national security networks within 30 days. Another includes a binding operational directive to secure federal civilian networks and facilitate access to frontier AI models across critical infrastructure sectors, including hospitals, banks, utilities and state and local governments, which must also be issued within 30 days.

It also calls for the Treasury Department — with support from the Office of the National Cyber Director, the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — to establish a voluntary coordination clearinghouse between the government, AI companies and critical infrastructure operators.

Additional provisions would direct the Office of Management and Budget to identify existing federal grant funding that could support AI vulnerability-detection efforts within 30 days. It also tasks the Office of Personnel Management with increasing cyber hiring via the U.S. Tech Force within 60 days. The Tech Force, launched in December, has expressly been recruiting cyber talent for the last several weeks, though it has only onboarded 10 total employees thus far.

The other section of the directive focuses on establishing a new government framework for overseeing advanced AI systems, including the creation of a classified benchmarking process to determine which models qualify as “covered frontier models.”

Per the order, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, CISA and others would have 60 days to establish the classified evaluation process.

The NSA, in consultation with those agencies, would then be tasked with formally determining which AI systems meet the threshold. The NSA’s involvement in these efforts was reported in May by Nextgov/FCW.

In the same section governing frontier model development, the Commerce secretary is also tasked with assisting in the development of a classified AI benchmarking process that will inform the voluntary framework for AI developers. The final draft of the order states that the agency's secretary will work “through the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology,” a caveat that wasn’t included in the initial draft, per a copy reported last month by Politico.

The administration’s approach to AI has shifted in recent months amid the emergence of Anthropic’s Mythos, a powerful cybersecurity-focused AI model that has become a major driver of government discussions, as officials grapple with how advanced AI systems can rapidly uncover vulnerabilities across computer networks.

OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-5.5-Cyber, which also demonstrated sophisticated cyber capabilities, has further heightened concerns in Washington over how quickly these systems are advancing and how they could reshape both cyber defensive and offensive operations.

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Top 100 leaders on navigating today's federal market

Nick Wakeman — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:41:01 -0400

The release of the 2026 Washington Technology Top 100 is approaching rapidly and we are hosting a panel to help unveil the new iteration of the rankings at the June 11 Government Procurement Conference.

The GPC is produced by our sibling organization, the Federal Business Council. The Top 100 session will start at 2:50 p.m. with Philip Ritcheson, a senior vice president at Leidos; and Amanda Hissong Christian, an SVP at CACI International.

Follow this link to register for the event.

I will introduce the Top 100, then the discussion starts around how the leading companies are adapting to today’s market and the quickly evolving procurement landscape. This includes how contractors are doing business, as well as how teaming and partnership strategies are changing.

One of the big shifts we are tracking is the move to outcome-based contracts instead of those based meeting requirements. It makes sense on paper, but applying it is a significant change for customers and contractors.

The Government Procurement Conference also has a full slate of speakers that kicks off with Gregory Justice, associate administrator for the General Services Administration's Office of Small Business.

NASA’s Andre Sheppard and Christopher Hall will lead another session that focuses on small business and the need for companies to adapt their operating models.

From the Defense Department, Devin Bohanan will discuss the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies initiative for speeding up deployments of of emerging technologies..

Ruby Crenshaw-Lawrence from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency will also be speaking about how small businesses can engage with DOD.

A panel on the shift away from set-aside contracts will feature Mark Amtower, WT columnist and marketing expert; Kaamil Khan, president of Makpar Corp.; Nikhil Shenoy, CEO of Colvin Run Networks; and Natasha Velez, president and CEO of NVS Strategic Solutions.

The day will wrap up with a presentation from Cristi Suhadolnik, vice president of Capital 50 Consultants. She will dive into how GSA should be central to your growth strategy thanks to the consolidation of major contracts, changes to the multiple-award schedule, and requirements around transaction data reporting.

The event is on June 11 at the Washington Convention Center, kicking off at 9 a.m. Follow this link to register.

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SpaceX awarded $4.1B tracking satellite contract

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:02:52 -0400

Space Force has awarded a $4.16 billion contract to SpaceX for a constellation of satellites that the company will build to track airborne targets as part of a space-based sensing layer.

The Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator is a program the service branch established to counter adversaries’ anti-access/area-denial systems, which are often moving targets that present challenges to established airborne platforms. SB-AMTI’s goal is to create a more persistent, resilient tracking architecture for mitigating these threats.

Space Force awarded the contract as an Other Transaction Authority agreement that tasks SpaceX with providing the constellation as an early operational capability by 2028, the service branch said Friday.

Once fully built out, SB-AMTI will function as a combination of space-based sensors and communication links into a single network. Ground processing systems will be a part of that network as well.

“By focusing these capabilities to the space domain, we are providing the Joint Force with sustained battlespace awareness of contested airspace,” Space Force Col. Ryan Frazier, acting portfolio acquisition executive for space-based sensing and targeting, said in a release. “We are beginning development and integration efforts immediately to meet the program's rapid deployment milestones and address emerging national security requirements.”

More awards to other companies are in the works for later this year as Space Force works to further grow the pool of participants in SB-AMTI.

This award comes less than a week after Space Force finalized a separate $2.29 billion OTA contract with SpaceX for satellites to act as the backhaul layer for the Space Data Network, which is being set up to move data across different satellite constellations.

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Navy chooses 16 for $350M 'Seabed to Space' systems contract

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:59:04 -0400

The Navy has awarded 16 companies positions on a seven-year, $349.9 million contract to help develop and field systems for gathering and processing information while onboard afloat vessels.

Awardees will compete for task orders to perform technical work across the entire lifecycles of these intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. This includes efforts to incorporate new technologies and other capabilities into the ISR systems.

The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific received 31 bids in total for the ISR Systems and Information Operations from Seabed to Space contract that also goes by the S2ISR acronym, the Pentagon said in its Thursday awards digest.

Winners are as follows:

Booz Allen Hamilton (incumbent)
Epsilon C5I (incumbent)
General Dynamics IT (incumbent)
HII (incumbent)
KBR
Leidos (incumbent)
MAG Aerospace
Parsons Corp. (incumbent)
Peraton (incumbent)
Prescient Edge
Science Applications International Corp. (incumbent)
Scientific Research Corp.
Sev1Tech (now part of Entarian)
T2S
Vickers & Nolan Enterprises
VTG

S2ISR succeeds a contract awarded in 2021 to 11 companies that have been obligated $111.8 million in total order volume since, according to GovTribe data. All of the top five recipients will continue on to the iteration: Peraton, Science Applications International Corp., Epsilon C5I, Booz Allen Hamilton and Leidos.

The contract’s key task areas include hardware and software development, algorithm development, data design processing, systems engineering, installation, testing, deployment, maintenance, training and analysis.

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Picogrid collects $45M Series A round to integrate defense systems

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:58:10 -0400

Picogrid, a developer of data fusion products for systems integration usage, has collected $45 million in Series A capital from investors to aid efforts at expanding the portfolio of offerings and accelerate deployments.

The company opened for business in 2020 to build hardware and software for military operators to connect, control and integrate different types of autonomous systems and sensors. As Picogrid sees the world, integrating those systems into military networks has become a bottleneck situation and should only have to happen once for the entire ecosystem.

Bessemer Venture Partners led the Series A round announced Friday. Washington Harbour Partners and GSBackers joined the fold as new investors. Initialized Capital, Starburst Ventures, Credo Ventures, Giant Step Capital and Alumni Ventures are among the returning investors.

With this newfound investment, Picogrid will push to expand the network of industry partners that participate in its 100-company strong vendor ecosystem. Skydio, Northrop Grumman, Echodyne, CX2 and Neros are examples of companies that already participate in the network.

"The systems are getting better, but the seams between them aren’t keeping up," Picogrid CEO Zane Mountcastle said in a release. "Operators in the field are paying that tax every day, and our job is to take it off them. This funding helps us meet demand already in front of us from U.S. forces and allies, continue to invest in the infrastructure powering the next generation of defense and scale our production in California, Oklahoma, and across the country."

Picogrid’s family of products includes Legion, a data fusion platform that is designed to act as a connective tissue between disparate military systems so they can communicate with one another.

The company also designs its Helios node to provide physical hardware infrastructure and edge computing resources for systems to connect into Legion.

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GSA is preparing an AI-specific acquisition reform rule

Alexandra Kelley — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration is developing changes to artificial intelligence acquisition provisions within its general rules that will prioritize a firm fixed-price procurement model and reduce hurdles to agency adoption.

In the coming weeks, the agency is planning to debut a draft AI acquisition rule for addition into the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation, according to two people familiar with the proceedings.

The new rule is part of GSA’s effort to balance implementing AI procurement rules that encourage market growth and foster competition while benefitting government buyers and taxpayers, the same person said, and part of the government’s mission to bring a “common sense” approach to AI acquisition. To do so, the rule will focus on removing bureaucratic rules and hurdles to commercial item acquisition, including AI and IT software.

The same person said that part of the process will be to analyze which contracts are not on a firm fixed-price basis and what is able to be shifted over. Per the rules, resellers and partners will remain part of GSA’s business strategy, the same person said, but the agency is also trying to make itself a “more predictable business partner” to original equipment manufacturers, including AI developers.

“It's … not going to be a one size fits all solution,” the same person told Nextgov/FCW.

In addition to the AI-focused draft rule, new Federal Acquisition Regulation rule updates are also underway and are set to continue overhauling the government procurement process. These updates are intended to be finalized at the end of the fiscal year, pending approval by the FAR Council, and will consist of roughly a dozen rules, the source said. Both revisions will have a 30-day public comment window.

The FAR is a series of procurement regulations that govern how executive agencies enter into, develop and manage contracts. In his second administration, President Donald Trump has worked to overhaul the FAR, issuing an executive order that primarily aims to streamline the acquisition process and bring more companies to the federal market.

The future of OneGov

Changes to GSA’s contracting structure will further cement the government’s preference for firm fixed-pricing, echoing mandates outlined in a late April executive order that seeks to move the government away from cost-reimbursement models.

GSA’s landmark OneGov program could also see changes in its contracting structure. Through the initiative, GSA has partnered with roughly two dozen tech providers to offer deeply discounted rates on software to government customers by treating the government as a single large customer.

The person familiar predicts that OneGov contracts will change, anticipating the focus of the initiative to adopt longer-term contracts, echoing sentiments expressed in an agency leader’s remarks last week.

“I think the major change in OneGov from this year to last is going to be working to put in more longer-term OneGov agreements, things that are still going to be very competitively priced,” the same person said.

Washington Technology Editor-in-Chief Nick Wakeman contributed to this report.

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WT 360: Defense tech investing is cool again, but can it stay that way?

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

If it feels like investors everywhere have some curiosity about the defense tech landscape, then it’s because more of them both want to increase their knowledge and sometimes involvement in the ecosystem.

Steve Brotman, founder and managing partner of the growth equity investment firm Alpha Partners, fits into that category as an observer and participant that works with venture capital firms to be involved in promising tech companies.

Steve joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to answer the questions laid out in the title, namely how it became cool again for investors to get involved with defense tech companies and markers that indicate how long this boom of interest could last.

SpaceX’s initial public offering and corporate VC funds feature in the chat too. Also listen out for Steve’s tips and suggested homework for business leaders to do before venturing out into VC networks.

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Observable Space fetches $90M in Series A capital

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 29 May 2026 10:59:20 -0400

Observable Space, a developer of optical systems for use in laser communications and other sensing efforts in space, has collected $90 million in Series A capital from investors to support its product development efforts.

The company opened for business in February 2025 to build software-defined telescopes and other hardware for operators to track satellites and conduct deep space observation missions, among other space domain awareness missions.

Lux Capital led the Series A round announced Thursday. RTX’s venture capital arm acted as one of four co-leaders alongside Upfront Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners and Island Green Partners. BRV Capital, Fathom Fund and Venrex also participated.

Observable Space will use a bulk of the new capital to further iterate its products for laser communications and in-space systems, plus expand its international operations.

“If you control light, you control space,” Dan Roelker, co-founder and chief executive of Observable Space, said in a release. “Companies and nations that precisely track objects, navigate spacecraft and communicate terabits per second will define the next era of the space economy.”

In addition to the new investment, Observable Space also announced its booking of a potential $94 million Space Force contract to scale up the production of its optical telescopes.

The service branch is eyeing these telescopes as augmenting other space domain awareness systems and has awarded $22 million in initial task order work.

Space Force made the award through the Pentagon’s Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program, known as APFIT, which aims to quickly field new solutions.

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Computacenter enters federal arena with acquisition of reseller

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 29 May 2026 10:12:00 -0400

Computacenter, a U.K.-headquartered technology services provider, has agreed to acquire IT product reseller Government Acquisitions Inc. for an initial $63 million cash consideration that marks a foray into the U.S. federal market.

GAI opened for business in 1989 and describes its core focus areas as including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, automation, analytics and IT infrastructure. Like with other resellers, many agencies order products of commercial brand name tech providers via contracts held by GAI.

With this transaction announced Thursday, Computacenter is adding 90 employees to its North American operations as the current GAI leadership team will continue to run the business as a specialist federal unit.

“GAI provides us with access to a new market for growth in the United States, diversifies our business and leverages our growing capabilities and infrastructure,” Computacenter chief executive Mike Norris said in a release.

GAI reported $390 million in gross invoiced income for 2025 on $8 million in adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

All parties expect to close the transaction on Monday following the receipt of clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

The transaction has a potential value of $92 million, inclusive of the initial $63 million payment and up to $29 million in further performance-based payments through to the end of 2027.

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Your PM heard it, but winning just isn't worth it to them

Nic Coppings — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:43:58 -0400

The customer started venting about a staffing problem that was killing their timeline.

It wasn’t on the agenda. Your project manager acknowledged the frustration and steered the conversation back to the status update.

Efficient. Professional. And exactly wrong.

Three months later, that staffing problem became a standalone contract. A competitor won it. It could have been a contract modification on the PM’s existing program — six figures — requiring nothing more than one question: “What would it look like if we helped you solve that?”

I heard this story from the PM. Not as a confession of failure. More like a shrug.

“I knew it was something,” he told me. “I just didn’t want to open that door.”

I asked why not.

“Because the last time I flagged an opportunity, my boss said, ‘Great — go and win it.’ That meant months of qualifying, briefing business development, sitting in capture reviews, and writing proposal sections — on top of running my program — with no additional resources. I became the de facto capture manager for something I had no time to own. Never again.”

He wasn’t disengaged. He wasn’t disloyal. He was a rational person who had learned exactly what his organization rewarded.

I hear similar stories in almost every training class we run.

The Intel Is There. It’s Going Nowhere.

Your PMs aren’t missing the intel. They’re in the room. They hear the customer comments that never make it into an email — the budget concerns, the frustrations, the requirements quietly forming. They know.

What they’ve also learned is exactly what happens when they say something.

Small stuff — a contract mod, a quick scope addition — they’ll flag that. Low-risk, easy to handle. But an adjacent opportunity? Something that’s going to trigger a capture effort? That calculation is instant: surface it, own it. Brief BD. Sit in reviews. Write the proposal. Stay close through the award. All while running a program where everyone expects flawless delivery.

So the intel stays in their head. The requirement matures. The RFP drops. Your organization finds out the same day your competitors do.

The Load Nobody Is Counting

GovCon PMs routinely carry 90% or higher billable targets. Every contracted hour spoken for before a single internal email gets answered. Real weeks well north of 40 hours.

Leadership adds a growth expectation on top and wonders why nothing changes.

The PM’s calculation isn’t complicated: I am already full. This will land on me. I’ve seen it happen. No.

“Everyone owns growth” lands very differently when you’re already beyond max capacity.

What Your System Is Teaching Them

The choice your PM is making isn’t really about the opportunity. It’s about survival.

Share it — and become the capture manager you were never trained to be, carrying a pursuit nobody resourced on top of a program you can’t afford to drop. Stay quiet — focus on execution, hit your numbers, and let someone else find it. Ignorance is bliss.

That’s not a hard decision. That’s not even a close call.

Presence, curiosity, the willingness to stay in an uncomfortable customer moment — these are not personality traits your PM either has or doesn’t have. These are operational skills that can be learned.

Most PMs are never taught them.

And the ones who figure it out on their own eventually learn something else: using what they know often creates more burden than benefit.

So they stay quiet and the intel dies with them. Not dramatically. Just… quietly. Permanently.

The Number You Can’t Calculate

You track the pipeline. Win rates. Weighted value.

What you don’t track — what no one tracks — is the opportunity that never made it to the pipeline. The requirement that should have developed inside a contract you were already running. The one your PM heard about months before the RFP and never shared.

That number is invisible, which is exactly why it’s so dangerous.

Think about your last three RFP surprises. Great relationships you had. Contracts that should have been yours to shape. When did your PM first hear about it?

If the honest answer is months before the RFP…the intel was there, so why didn’t you know about it?

Here’s the question that should keep you up at night.

How many other opportunities were undiscovered because staying quiet was easier than sharing?

Your team knows the answer. They just won’t say it out loud.

Consider the market your PMs are sitting inside right now. Federal agencies are reorganizing, shedding staff, and resetting priorities at a pace this market hasn't seen in a generation. New requirements are forming in real time as customers figure out how to do more with less. The federal market has never had more opportunity hiding in plain sight — inside relationships your delivery teams already own.

The PM who knows how to surface intel, and has a reason to share it, may be the most underused growth resource in your organization.

The intel is there. It always has been.

The problem isn't that your PMs don't see the opportunity. It's that your operating model has taught them staying quiet is safer than sharing it.

Because if surfacing opportunity feels like punishment, your PMs will keep choosing silence.

Nic Coppings is managing partner at Hi-Q Group, where he works with federal contractors on the relationship and engagement skills that drive on-contract growth, protect recompetes, and surface new opportunities. He has more than 20 years of experience in federal contracting and can be reached at ncoppings@hi-qgroup.com.

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Army logistics command wants to move away from staff augmentation

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 29 May 2026 01:17:00 -0400

The Army is looking to overhaul how it buys enterprise services by shifting from a staff augmentation to an outcome-based managed service model.

The service’s deputy chief of staff for logistics issued a commercial solutions opening on Thursday to solicit proposals for the G-4 Enterprise Logistics and Installation Support Services contract, or ELISS.

The Army wants a single provider to integrate logistics operations, installation management, and legislative and budgetary affairs support under one managed services umbrella.

In phase 1, companies will submit a solution brief with a rough order of magnitude for cost. This will include a narrative of no more than 10 pages.

The brief must cover four topics: turnkey execution model, cross-functional team integration, outcomes-based metrics, and footprint reduction and security.

Only offers whose phase 1 submissions are deemed viable will be invited to continue in the competition.

The Army currently relies on a staff augmentation approach, which places a heavy management burden on the service. The Army wants to move away from acting as daily task managers

The CSO describes the Army’s desire to move away from acting as daily task managers, which would help service branch personnel act more as strategic planners and focus on policy and strategy.

The Army's desired end state is a proactive industry partner who anticipates requirements, owns the processes and technology to deliver outcomes, and manages day-to-day work independently.

“The vendor will own the processes, enabling technology, and execution methodologies to deliver cross-functional expertise, superior analytical products, and seamless legislative integration,” according to the CSO’s statement of objectives.

The contract will be for 58 months, starting with a 10-month base period followed by four 12-month option periods.

Questions on the CSO are due at 12 p.m. Eastern time on June 4 with proposals due June 11.

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Tribal 8(a) contractor wins round 1 of its suspension fight, but remains sidelined

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:16:06 -0400

The Small Business Administration’s Office of Hearings and Appeals has found the agency fell short of several requirements when it suspended ATI Government Solutions from the 8(a) program.

ATI was suspended from federal business after an employee was caught on a hidden camera saying that the company, owned by the Susanville Indian Rancheria tribe, acted merely as a pass-through front to funnel 8(a) contract dollars to non-8(a) companies.

The suspension covered both the 8(a) program and all federal contracting under the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

In a May 18 ruling of ATI's appeal, the judge said that SBA did not provide enough evidence to justify the suspension. The judge’s decision was first reported by GovConIntelligence.com.

However, the judge did not lift the suspension of ATI. He instead sent the case back to SBA and set a June 12 deadline to resubmit a complete record of ATI’s suspension.

What the agency submitted originally was woefully inadequate, the judge found.

After ATI filed its appeal, the judge ordered SBA to submit all documents the agency relied on when making the suspension. But the only document SBA submitted was the FAR suspension letter.

SBA's submission to the judge included no certification by an agency official and no copy of the 8(a)-suspension notice.

When pressed on this, SBA changed its story. The original FAR suspension letter said the move was based on what an ATI employee said to undercover agents working for conservative activist and video producer James O’Keefe.

But in its legal response to the judge, SBA said that ATI should be out of the 8(a) program because it was already suspended under the FAR contracting rules.

“The agency response here does not mention these statements [by the employee] and makes no effort whatever to substantiate them or to rely upon them as reasons for the suspension,” the judge wrote. “The agency has thus stated on appeal a completely different justification for its action.”

SBA argued that it is allowed to make the change, but the judge said it is “settled law” that the agency cannot do that.

In its appeal, ATI said the person captured by the hidden camera was a temporary employee who was not privy to how the company operated. ATI argued that SBA would have learned this if it conducted its own investigation.

The judge seems to agree: “SBA conducted no such investigation and instead relied on a video that does not establish the individual had any personal knowledge of the facts underlying her statements.”

While the judge’s ruling is a victory for ATI, it is not a full vindication yet. The judge has essentially said that the record SBA submitted is such a mess, that he cannot determine whether a suspension is warranted.

SBA has a chance to rectify that with its June 12 filing. ATI must file objections by June 22 and then file an amended response by June 29.

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Parry Labs hires Claussen as chief executive

Ross Wilkers — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:22:10 -0400

Parry Labs has hired a new chief executive in Don Claussen, a nearly two-decade defense technology veteran who joins after three years as CEO of ST Engineering iDirect.

Claussen succeeds co-founder John “JD” Parkes, who has moved to executive chairman of the board of directors. Parry Labs said Wednesday that Parkes continues to focus on the company’s long-term strategy, while Claussen will assume responsibility for leading the business day-to-day.

This transition takes almost two years after Parry Labs completed its first institutional investment round that collected $80 million in capital from investors. Parry Labs planned to put a majority of that capital toward efforts in command-and-control, interoperability and artificial intelligence.

Parkes and his colleague Robert Miller started Parry Labs in 2016 to bring together open architecture software and smaller-form hardware into a digital framework for military operators.

As its new CEO, Claussen will lead the next phase of Parry Labs’ efforts to scale the company’s market presence and operating model.

“Now more than ever, it is paramount to build mission outcomes at speed and scale,” Parkes said in a release. “As we, Parry, have continued to grow, I am happy to bring a new CEO and leader that will help us do that.”

"As the (Defense Department) shifts its priorities, I am excited to help position Parry within this evolving opportunity space,” added Claussen. “The defense industry needs exactly these capabilities right now: open architecture, edge compute, C2, and integrated systems with the warfighter at the center."

More recently, Claussen led the U.S. government-focused subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Engineering in its push to expand across federal satellite communications programs.

Claussen’s career in industry also includes leadership roles at Intelsat General, that satellite network operator’s U.S. government subsidiary, plus L3Harris Technologies and Intelsat.

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Entarian starts anew with rebrand after ERT-Sev1Tech combination

Ross Wilkers — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:18:23 -0400

Earth Resources Technology Inc.’s acquisition of Sev1Tech in February not only tripled the size of the workforce, it also provided an opportunity to take a fresh look at how to present this new company.

Entarian is the new name for this now-1,600 employee team after going through the exercise of what has already not been taken. CEO Mark Lee described the word as a rough Latin translation of “two becoming one,” which also applies to the environment Entarian is looking to create through this fresh start.

“You want to make sure that whatever culture you want to establish at the corporate level is kind a big tent that a lot of different kinds of people can feel a part of,” Lee told WT. “That's really what we've been striving to create as we've come together, to make sure that we've got a big tent that supports a lot of different points of view, different types of expertise and the different kinds of customers that we're serving.”

Space Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration certainly would represent customer diversity for Entarian. But those agencies also share the common thread of having to manage space assets as part of their missions.

With that mission set evolving, how can Entarian move as their customers do and well before it is time to start the recompete process?

Enter into the equation a solution development team that Entarian has stood up to act as an engine constantly looking at what their customers need during the course of the contract. This team reports directly to Lee.

Martin Wright and Vir Thanvi lead this effort in their respective roles as chief solutions officer and senior vice president of integrated solutions.

Chris Rodriguez, Entarian’s chief growth officer, told WT this team is tasked with creating ideas to answer both explicit and implicit requirements that then are pitched to the customer.

Rodriguez provided example problem sets that include resiliency in satellite communications and finding ways to integrate artificial intelligence into cybersecurity functions.

“We don’t want our solutions to be exclusively focused on growth initiatives,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a matter of finding ways to be good stewards of our clients' time, our clients' dollars, and always finding ways to advance their missions.”

As ever when forming a company like Entarian, having one eye on growth and entering new markets along the way is a core part of the strategy and approach for carrying it out.

That includes looking at opportunities Entarian sees itself as better positioned to compete for as a larger business.

Rodriguez said the ground operations of Space Force is one area Entarian believes it can now enter, thanks to a $188 million global network contract that Sev1Tech booked in 2024.

“We look for areas where we're engaging in common domain sets that represent a new customer base,” Rodriguez said. “The long-term pole in the tent here from the from the growth perspective is how we take our space capabilities and move into other market sets, whether its supporting the Army, MDA (Missile Defense Agency) or Navy.”

Much of that harkens back to the rationale behind putting ERT and Sev1Tech together in the first place. ERT’s business was mostly civilian and Sev1Tech’s portfolio tilted more toward defense, while Sev1Tech largely defined themselves as a technology company.

But Lee characterized both companies as having similar approaches to looking at and coming up with solutions for problems customers navigate, so finding common ground on that front has not been a significant hurdle to climb.

“If you want to deliver technology, understanding the underlying subject matter allows you to do that a lot more effectively,” Lee said.

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GSA joins White House’s fraud prevention task force

Edward Graham — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:59:00 -0400

The General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it is joining the White House’s anti-fraud task force, a move that enlists a key federal acquisition agency into President Donald Trump’s self-described “war on fraud.”

The unit, led by Vice President JD Vance, was created by a March executive order and is tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse across federal benefits programs.

GSA said in a press release that it is “uniquely positioned to help the Task Force detect irregularities, accelerate investigations, and safeguard taxpayer dollars,” with members of the anti-fraud unit “now leveraging GSA’s unmatched reach in acquisition, shared services, technology modernization, and federal real estate.”

Although the order establishing the task force emphasized efforts to identify federal benefits fraud, GSA said it will support the unit’s work by identifying waste, fraud and abuse across government contracting programs.

“GSA sits at the center of the federal acquisition and contracting ecosystem, making us a critical force in the fight against fraud,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement, adding that the agency “will bring advanced analytical capabilities, investigative support, and cross-government coordination to help expose high-risk fraud patterns and stop bad actors from exploiting taxpayer-funded systems.”

Trump’s directive establishing the task force also granted it the authority to withhold funds from states and local jurisdictions “that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements.”

The effort has been clouded by allegations of political bias, however, with the order creating the unit notably calling out Democrat-led states and accusing public officials of intentionally failing to police benefits programs so migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border can receive assistance.

Vance said earlier this month the unit was “deferring” $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and threatened to withhold payments from other states if they do not adequately enhance their efforts to combat fraud in federal benefits programs. That came after the White House kicked off its anti-fraud push in February by announcing that it was withholding over $240 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota following claims about the misuse of funds in the state’s social services programs.

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Pentagon consolidates Microsoft software buys into a single $9.7B Dell agreement

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:37:05 -0400

The Defense Department has bundled its Microsoft software licenses into a single $9.7 billion blanket purchase agreement awarded to Dell.

The Wednesday announcement covers DOD’s existing Microsoft products – Windows enterprise operating system and Office Professional Plus – as well as cloud capabilities through Microsoft 365 licenses.

The BPA also includes specialized bundles, such as “Disconnected No Cloud Access” licenses.

The scope of the BPA supports the transition of specific workloads to the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, on which Microsoft is one of the primes.

DOD describe the contract as a follow-on award to streamline and consolidate software acquisition across the department as well as the intelligence community and the Coast Guard. The agreement allows customers to buy Microsoft software licenses, cloud subscriptions and software assurance.

The BPA is structured as a firm-fixed-price award, which was made as part of DOD's enterprise software initiative. The announcement does not give an expiration date for the Dell agreement.

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