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CACI places new bet on growing its manufacturing chops

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:47:02 -0400

CACI International is building out real manufacturing muscle as works to apply years of investments to transform itself from a services company to a technology-drive government contractor.

That shift has been in the works for several years and the latest step is the opening of a manufacturing center in the Rochester, New York, that will focus on defense electronics.

The new 61,000-square-foot facility increases CACI’s manufacturing footprint by 300%, the company said.

CACI has been investing in manufacturing capabilities since at least 2019, when it acquired LGS Innovations and Mastodon Design to add signal intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber products. The acquisitions provided CACI many of its earliest manufacturing capabilities.

In 2024, CACI acquired Azure Summit and that added a facility in Melbourne, Florida for radio frequency and electromagnetic-spectrum hardware.

CACI's late 2025 acquisition of Arka Group also added a Danbury, Connecticut hub that produces electro-optical and infrared sensors for satellites.

Earlier this year, CACI hired Chris Monoski for the newly-created role of executive vice president of manufacturing. This indicates that CACI sees manufacturing as core to the business model.

"Years ago, we invested in software-defined innovation because we knew the character of modern warfare was changing. Today, those investments are being transformed into advanced electronic warfare capabilities right here in Rochester,” CACI President and CEO John Mengucci said.

CACI’s investment in the Rochester facility further emphasizes the criticality of manufacturing for the company.

"As we expand our manufacturing capacity nationwide, we intentionally chose Rochester because of its exceptional talent, world-class capabilities, and longstanding community partnerships," Monoski said. "This facility reflects our long-term commitment to the region and positions us to deliver advanced capabilities faster, at greater scale, and with the quality our customers depend on."

The facility will support production, delivery, training, customer acceptance testing and onsite storage for CACI's Terrestrial Layer System Brigade Combat Team Manpack (TLS BCT Manpack) program with the Army.

The facility also has room for expansion that CACI can use to produce more software-defined electronic warfare capabilities at scale, the company said.

"Demand for advanced electronic warfare technology is surging, and Rochester gives us the capacity to deliver for our customers today while preparing for tomorrow," said Tom Kirkland, CACI executive vice president of electronic warfare.

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Supply chain, operations and health leadership moves across the market

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:29:17 -0400

Aeon

Joseph Xuereb has joined this developer of tactical weapons systems as vice president of supply chain, a role he brings three decades of experience to.

“As Aeon moves into rate production and expands our manufacturing footprint, building a resilient, scalable supply chain is critical to delivering at the speed and volume our customers need,” Aeon wrote in a LinkedIn post on the hire.

Xuereb most recently worked as director of supply chain for the launched effects business line at Anduril. His career also includes roles at AirBorn-Molex, Flextronics and 3M.

BAE Systems Inc.

Michael Loeffler has joined the defense company’s U.S. subsidiary as vice president of supply chain, a role he brings two decades of experience to.

Loeffler moves into the role formerly held by Brad Pelachyk, now chief global supply chain officer for the BAE Systems PLC parent, and oversees how “Inc.” works to ensure its supply chain remains healthy.

Prior to BAE, he worked as VP of global supply chain logistics at Bell. His career also includes roles at L3Harris Technologies, GE Aviation and Boeing.

Blackwatch International

Mike Horton has joined the technology and engineering services provider as chief operating officer, a role he brings two decades of experience to.

Blackwatch has tasked Horton with leading its functions in delivery, organizational performance, customer relationships and continued growth.

He more recently worked as vice president of national security at ASRC Federal and also holds the distinction of serving as the Homeland Security Department’s first-ever chief data officer.

BWX Technologies

Suzanne Maddux has joined the nuclear fuel and component supplier as senior vice president of operations, a newly-created position she brings 25 years of experience to.

Maddux now leads BWXT’s functions related to environmental health and safety, security, operational performance, and supply chain. She also provides oversight for manufacturing operations, engineering, quality and company-wide shared learning efforts.

She most recently worked as vice president of global supply chain at Mercury Systems and is an 18-year veteran of RTX Corp.

Guidehouse

Mishelle Pedenko has joined the professional services firm as growth leader for its health segment, a role she brings 24 years of experience to.

Guidehouse’s LinkedIn post on the hire describes her role as covering the firm’s provider, payer, federal health and life sciences practices.

Pedenko most recently worked at Accenture for 14 years, including the latter three as managing director and health provider business lead for the Midwest region.

Mantech

Steve Kapinos has moved up to chief data officer after 17 years at the company, where he most recently worked as vice president of cognitive cyber.

“Mr. Kapinos drives delivery and adoption of innovative capabilities enabling mission operator success in a dynamic and contested cyber environment,” Mantech wrote in a LinkedIn post on his new position.

He additionally advises Mantech’s executive leadership team on cyber policy matters.

Oddball

Paul Baumgartner has joined the digital services provider as vice president of federal health, a role he brings 18 years of industry experience to.

Oddball’s LinkedIn post on the hire describes his responsibilities as including the company’s growth strategy across the Health and Human Services Department, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and other federal health organizations.

Baumgartner most recently worked as a business development executive at General Dynamics’ IT services unit. Prior to GDIT, he spent 12 years at SemanticBits.

Red Cell Partners

Erin O’Brien Hawley has joined the technology incubator as chief revenue officer, a role she brings 27 years of experience to.

“I'll be focused on our work across government, helping translate great technology into mission-critical impact,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post on her new role.

Hawley most recently worked as chief revenue officer at Primer.ai. Her career also includes roles at Instabase, DataRobot and Cloudera.

WSP

Jess Commerford has moved up to federal business line executive at the engineering and design firm, which he joined in 2019 through its acquisition of Louis Berger.

Commerford now oversees the operational aspects of WSP’s federal portfolio and succeeds Todd Semonite, who was appointed federal regional executive. Semonite’s role focuses on advancing growth across the federal business.

Commerford spent three decades at Louis Berger before it was purchased by WSP, while Semonite is a former commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Air

Matthew Steckman, president and chief business officer at Anduril, has joined the board of directors at this supply chain tracking and analysis software provider.

Steckman’s appointment follows Air’s rebranding in June to that name and identity from Govini. The company received a $150 million investment from Bain Capital in the fall with an eye toward hiring more technical staffers in artificial intelligence, data and engineering.

Also during the summer, Air’s board elected NightDragon CEO Dave DeWalt as a member and former ID.me executive David Kensick joined as chief operating officer.

Veilant

John Hassoun, chief executive of VTG, has joined the board of directors at this digital security tech outfit owned by Enlightenment Capital.

Veilant rebranded to that new name and identity in the spring from Ridgeline International, close to three years after Enlightenment acquired the company.

Hassoun’s career in the market includes four years as CEO of Vistronix, which ASRC Federal acquired in 2016.

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ASRC Federal wins $495M background check support recompete

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:22:41 -0400

ASRC Federal has won a five-year, $494.4 million contract to continue its intake support and other professional services to the Defense Department agency responsible for conducting background investigations on people seeking security clearances.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency received three proposals for the Case Processing Operations Center 2.0 recompete, the Pentagon said in its Thursday awards digest.

DCSA uses the CPOC program to support its mission of conducting roughly 2 million background checks annually for 100 government agencies and roughly 10,000 cleared companies.

Solicitation documents first released in April describe how the agency is also using the new CPOC 2.0 contract to aid its transition to continuous vetting, an approach for near-real time monitoring of cleared federal employees and contractors.

ASRC Federal won the current iteration in 2020 to provide facility monitoring, program management and implementation support for DCSA amid its efforts at that time to set up its system for continuous vetting and adjudication.

CPOC 2.0 is set up as a non-personal contract with a scope of work covering telephone and switchboard services, application ingestion, case maintenance, item level processing and post-closing support.

DCSA structured new CPOC 2.0 contract under a hybrid firm-fixed-price and cost reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity model.

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How a continuous learning cycle will redefine national advantage

Artie Mabbett — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

When we talk about competition in the artificial intelligence era, it is easy to focus on algorithms, computing power or autonomous systems.

Those capabilities matter, but technology alone does not create national advantage. Advantage belongs to the nation that can turn promising technology into trusted capability and continuously improve it as missions and threats change.

That requires government, industry and academia to connect AI and digital engineering with physical testing (i.e. hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), flight test, etc.) and human expertise. When those elements work as one system, every model informs a test, every test produces better data, and every insight improves the next design iterations. The result is a national capacity to move systems from the laboratory into operators’ hands more quickly.

The Evolution of Aerospace & Defense Engineering

North Wind carries forward a technical lineage that reaches back through its predecessors, most recently Calspan, to the 1950s and 60s when engineering teams at our Plymouth, Minnesota, site developed regenerative storage heater technology and helped create one of the first test facility capable of real-gas, real-time hypersonic flight simulation.

It’s exciting to think that the engineering expertise we’ve built over eight decades has informed many of the nation’s major aerospace and defense milestones; from Apollo 11, which demonstrated the power of large-scale systems engineering, to the first integrated air-breathing hypersonic flight test in the 2000s and advances in hypersonic propulsion, materials and high-speed testing in the 2010s.

Fast forward to 2020 through today, AI and autonomy are enabling faster, more adaptive defense capabilities.

Today, we must evolve long-standing engineering expertise to help shape the next generation of capabilities and the next decade’s major milestones such as NASA’s new Flight Dynamics Research Facility (FDRF).

AI offers today’s technology development teams a powerful new set of tools. Test results that once took weeks to evaluate can be analyzed in hours, while simulations allow engineers to explore thousands of design variations before hardware is manufactured.

Machine learning can identify relationships across data sets rapidly, a process traditionally challenging and time-consuming for human engineers.

Combined with additive manufacturing, these capabilities can be integrated to create a more dynamic workflow rooted in continuous learning. Engineers can evaluate more options, test more hypotheses and spend less time searching for answers and more time solving meaningful problems.

Why Physical Testing Matters More Than Ever

Experience over decades of building and operating test systems has taught us that every model eventually has to meet the physical world. Today, as engineering becomes more digital, the benefits of human in the loop and flight testing increases in value across the development lifecycle.

Digital twins, simulations and AI-generated models can reduce uncertainty, but their assumptions still must be tested against reality. The more sophisticated our tools become, the more confidence we need in the data used to train, calibrate and verify them.

Hypersonic development is a good example. AI and digital engineering are allowing aerospace teams to iterate aerodynamic concepts in days rather than months, yet every promising design eventually reaches the point where it must be validated in specialized ground-test facilities capable of replicating hypersonic conditions.

Facilities for independent testing facility are now under construction and will help meet the nation’s growing need for modern ground-test capacity and capability.

Connecting Digital Engineering and Physical Testing

In the AI era, testing cannot remain the final checkpoint. It must become a continuous source of knowledge that improves models, informs design decisions and strengthens confidence in the delivered capability.

Every wind tunnel campaign, laboratory experiment and flight test should feed the engineering cycle, because rigorous testing that includes assessments of manufacturing and producibility helps innovation move faster by replacing uncertainty with evidence.

Tomorrow’s advantage will come from integrating both digital engineering and physical testing with human expertise, creating a system in which every experiment improves the next design and every design helps us plan a better experiment.

This continuous learning environment turns information into practical insights across concept development, system design, fabrication, testing and delivery, helping reduce risk and cost while strengthening national advantage.

Building a Connected Innovation Ecosystem

AI is also changing how the defense innovation ecosystem needs to work. Today's landscape is increasingly interconnected with government laboratories, universities, technology companies, startups, specialized manufacturers and defense organizations contributing distinct expertise.

Research facilities, test ranges and advanced laboratories are strategic national resources that connect people, technologies and ideas. With timely access to these facilities, digital engineering, advanced manufacturing, AI and physical experimentation can reinforce one another.

Advanced digital technologies may accelerate engineering, but speed alone is not enough. The advantage is our ability to learn, adapt and deliver trusted capabilities before the need becomes urgent.

That continuous learning cycle will be America’s next national advantage. America already has the people, infrastructure and partnerships to lead. Government and industry must now effectively connect AI-enabled digital engineering with physical testing and practical engineering experience.

Artie Mabbett is the CEO of North Wind.

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VA boosts EHR modernization contract with Oracle by $17B

Edward Graham — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Oracle’s contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs for the agency’s new electronic health record system will increase by almost $17 billion as part of a modified agreement, according to an award notice posted on SAM.gov on Wednesday.

VA first contracted with Cerner in 2018 to upgrade its health record system. Oracle subsequently acquired Cerner in 2022 and rebranded the combined unit as Oracle Health.

The announcement comes after VA published a notice last week detailing plans to extend its EHR modernization contract with Oracle for an additional three one-year optional ordering periods. The award increase will now bump up the contract’s total value from just under $10 billion to roughly $27 billion.

“Specifically, this modification will increase the overall contract ceiling and extend the Period of Performance,” last week’s contract modification documents said. “This action is necessary to continue [electronic health record modernization] deployment activities and associated support services until all VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and related facilities have fully transitioned to the EHR system.”

The agency’s modernization project — part of a broader federal effort to deploy a streamlined, interoperable EHR across VA, the Pentagon, the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — has been beset by cost overruns, technical glitches and usability concerns since the first software go live occurred in 2020.

Ongoing issues ultimately led to VA and Oracle renegotiating their contract in May 2023, with the deal being modified from an additional five-year term to five one-year terms. The latest modified agreement now has the ability to cover work through May 2031.

VA said extending its agreement with Oracle was necessary because “unanticipated complexities” slowed software deployments, which resulted in the contract’s ceiling being reached “sooner than originally planned.” The agency added that it “anticipates using the remaining ceiling by the first quarter of fiscal year 2027.”

VA paused most deployments of the new EHR system in April 2023 to remedy the problems slowing software rollouts across its network of 164 medical facilities. The agency announced plans at the tail end of the Biden administration in December 2024 to restart system go-lives at four Michigan-based medical sites in mid-2026.

Current VA Secretary Doug Collins — who has called the EHR modernization project a priority — subsequently added nine additional medical facilities to VA’s 2026 deployment schedule, bringing the total number of site rollouts this year to 13. VA officials previously said they are hoping to finish EHR system deployments at every one of the agency’s medical facilities by 2031.

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CMMC's paradox: Scores are up, but confidence is down

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:24:58 -0400

The government has decided to pause third-party assessments of how defense contractors protect controlled but unclassified information, so the quality of the current self-assessment regime remains an important line of defense against cyber risks.

In a bit of good news-bad news, a new study by Merrill Research and commissioned by CyberSheath found that contractors self-reported cybersecurity scores are rising but at the same time their confidence in the accuracy of those scores declined significantly.

The assessment program is the heart of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, which the Defense Department has been working toward for nearly a decade. DOD initiated the pause in July to consider the impact on small business and whether CMMC was imposing an undue regulatory burden.

The research found that the average Supplier Performance Risk System score rose to a five-year high of +51, up from +33 in 2025.

2025 was also the first year where a positive score was reported. A perfect NIST SP 800-171 score is 110.

While the average scores rose, confidence fell with only 65% of respondents saying they were extremely or very confident that their scores were accurate. Last year, the rate stood at 89%.

At the same time, only 1% said they believed they were completely prepared for CMMC certification. That is the same figure from the 2025 study.

“Most contractors are manufacturers, engineers, and specialized businesses whose mission is supporting the warfighter, not becoming cybersecurity experts,” said Emil Sayegh, CEO of CyberSheath.

CMMC reform should focus on making effective cybersecurity easier to consume while “preserving objective, verifiable assurance that protections are actually in place and working,” he said.

Verification and accountability are critical to ensuring reported compliance reflects operational cybersecurity, Sayegh said.

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Castelion, Muon Space complete Series C funding rounds

Ross Wilkers — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:05:30 -0400

Castelion

This three-year-old maker of hypersonic strike missiles has completed a $1 billion Series C capital raise to aid its transition into scaled production of these weapons and efforts to expand the product portfolio.

For Castelion, this new financing round follows its $350 million Series C that closed in December and an 18-month period where the company has booked $500 million in U.S. military contracts.

JPMorgan Chase’s Strategic Investment Group, which is part of the banking giant’s Security and Resiliency Initiative, Andreesen Horowitz and The Carlyle Group acted as co-leads for the Castelion Series C equity financing. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lavrock Ventures, Altimeter, General Catalyst and Interlagos joined new investor T. Rowe Price Associates in the raise.

Castelion now touts its valuation at around $13 billion following the Series C, which includes $800 million in equity capital and a $250 million revolving credit facility.

Castelion’s flagship system is the Blackbeard hypersonic missile, for which the Navy placed a $23.4 million firm-fixed-price order in June for 50 prototypes. In May, the Defense Department signed a testing-and-validation agreement with Castelion to lay down a framework for purchasing at least 500 Blackbeard missiles per year over up to five years.

The Pentagon’s pact with Castelion is part of a military-wide push to speed up the development and advancement of hypersonic weapons, which China and Russia have also prioritized. Hypersonics also depend on munitions, a segment of defense manufacturing under stress from conflicts in places like Ukraine and Russia.

In addition to Blackbeard, Castelion will use the newfound capital to speed up its work on a new precision strike weapon and systems for air and missile defense.

Bryon Hargis, Castelion’s chief executive and a co-founder, told CNBC in an interview aired Thursday described the company as “following the model of what the country used to do in the Apollo era.”

Muon Space

This five-year-old maker of small satellites has completed a $250 million Series C capital raise to aid its efforts at accelerating production of larger-scale constellations and expanding dual-use spacecraft.

For Muon, this new financing round follows its $146 million Series C round completed in the summer of 2025. Muon has launched seven satellites so far this year, a run that brings its total number of deployments to 11 satellites with plans for 13 more over the next 12 months.

Muon touts 50 customer satellites as currently in production and is pushing toward a production cadence of 500 birds per year. In addition to production, Muon also plans to use a portion of the newfound capital for investments in new capabilities such as orbital artificial intelligence computing.

Eclipse Capital led the Series C round for Muon in the same year that the investment firm also co-led True Anomaly’s $650 million Series D. Muon’s new investors include Galvanize, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, I Squared Capital and Woven Capital.

Existing investors returning to the fold for Muon include Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Activate Capital, ACME Capital, ArcTern Ventures and Overlap Holdings.

Muon designs its satellites to operate in low-Earth orbit while collecting and distributing Earth intelligence data for government and commercial entities.

The company’s federal portfolio includes a second-stage contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, which they signed in May to aid the further development and eventual deployment of the Halo satellite.

Muon is also one of 14 companies involved in NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition contract, which the agency uses to expand the availability of Earth observation data across scientific communities.

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SBA proposes sweeping rewrite of small business size standards

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:02:31 -0400

The Small Business Administration is proposing a massive overhaul of the small business size standards that reworks the formulas used to determine when a business qualifies as small.

SBA published a pair of Federal Register notices on Thursday that describe the changes. The first, a notice of availability for the revised methodology, lays out how SBA will calculate size standards.

The second is a proposed rule that will apply the formulate and rewrite the size standard tables.

Both are meant to be read together with the methodology notice explaining the how and why, while the proposed rule is the regulation that will apply the methodology.

Under the new methodology, SBA says it wants to abandon the size methodology released in 2024 by the Biden Administration.

The new size standards will be based on average market size that SBA will calculate from three components – national industry size, number of distinct geographic markets, and a net import/export adjustment.

SBA is using an approach similar to how the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission define a relevant market under their Horizontal Merger Guidelines. These are based on product market plus geographic market, according to SBA's methodology notice.

SBA also wants to use the Agriculture Department’s community zone algorithm to define whether competition is “local” or “national.”

The notice includes detailed formulas that SBA plans to use and the underlying data sources needed to complete the calculations.

Once approve, the new formulas will impact all the current size standards and will convert many size standards from receipt based to employee-based standards.

The conversion to more employee-based standards should benefit small business federal contracts.

“The act of winning a contract will not by itself force a firm to transition into a large business,” SBA wrote.

The changes will allow nearly 115,000 more businesses to claim small business status, SBA says. Many of those businesses will fall into NAICS categories of Management of Companies and Enterprises, Restaurants and Other Eating Places, and General Medical and Surgical Hospitals.

Losing small business status are the NAICS codes for Wired and Wireless Telecommunications and Waste Collection.

SBA is also adding a productivity adjustment for size standards based on receipts. Currently, SBA only adjusts receipt-based standards for inflation and the agency says that approach small businesses at a disadvantage.

“Without accounting productivity, the size standards are left with an incomplete assessment of small business size,” SBA wrote in its notice.

Comments on the proposed changes are due by Sept. 21.

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AI tokens are a consumable. The Pentagon should manage them like one.

John Mark Suhy — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

The Department of War was celebrating in early June.

Nearly half of its 3.5 million employees, officials said, were now using AI at work. It was the kind of adoption number that makes for a good press cycle and a better budget justification.

A few weeks later, researchers and engineers at the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command received an email asking them to throttle back. The Army Chief Information Officer had announced unlimited tokens in May.

By mid-June, the enterprise pool was empty and limits were back. Whether it gets replenished after October 1 was, according to the message, an open question.

Both things are true at once: the Army successfully drove enterprise AI adoption, and the Army ran out of AI. Those facts are not in tension. The second one happened because of the first.

This is being read in some quarters as a budget story: the Army under-bought, prices are volatile, someone will true up the contract next cycle. That reading is comfortable and wrong. DEVCOM did not overspend.

It did precisely what the department asked of it, and in doing so it surfaced a structural problem in how the enterprise buys and allocates AI. If the department treats that as an accounting problem, it will recur at a moment when the stakes are considerably higher than a delayed staff memo.

The department bought a license when it needed a magazine

Here is the structural error. DoW procured generative AI the way it procures software: seats, subscriptions, enterprise packs. But generative AI does not behave like software. It behaves like a consumable. Every query draws down a finite, purchased quantity.

The Army's enterprise pack came with 100 million tokens for the year. Individual users were allotted at least 200,000 tokens a month, with automatic top-ups when they ran dry. There is no version of that arithmetic that survives genuine enterprise adoption.

It is worth being precise about who ran out first. A research and engineering command exhausting its allocation is not a story about waste. Model-heavy work, code generation, test data, engineering analysis, materials and design tradeoffs, consumes tokens at rates that routine correspondence never will.

Heavy usage at DEVCOM is evidence that the capability reached the people best positioned to get real value from it. The problem is that the enterprise had no way to recognize that and fund it accordingly.

The military knows how to manage consumables. Fuel, ammunition, airlift, and satellite bandwidth are all finite, all contested, and all allocated through mature systems of prioritization: commander's intent, mission-essential task lists, allocation authorities that can surge one unit's share and throttle another's. Nobody issues unlimited JP-8 and hopes it works out.

Yet when the pool ran dry in June, the enterprise had no mechanism to distinguish between an account cleaning up a slide deck and one supporting a program that shapes a fielding decision. The throttle applied to everyone equally, which meant it applied to the highest-value work exactly as hard as the lowest. That is not rationing. That is a circuit breaker.

Adoption metrics created the burn rate

Compounding this: users who had signed up but weren't consuming their allotment reportedly received emails encouraging them to use more. Read that again in resource-management terms. The department made consumption the proxy for adoption, then measured its own success by how fast it drained a finite pool.

This is an entirely predictable outcome of how transformation initiatives get scored. Seats provisioned and queries run are easy to count. Decision quality, staff hours returned, and analytic depth are not. So the easy number becomes the metric, the metric becomes the target, and the organization optimizes for the thing that empties the magazine.

The readiness math is the part that should worry planners

Set the peacetime numbers against the wartime ones. Breaking Defense reported that DoW consumed roughly 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury. The Army's entire annual enterprise allocation was 100 million.

The steady-state figure and the contingency figure are not in the same universe. And the Army exhausted its steady-state pool in about six weeks of ordinary, encouraged, peacetime use: drafting, summarizing, coding, staff work.

Now run the scenario. A crisis begins. Demand for AI-enabled targeting support, ISR triage, logistics modeling, and course-of-action analysis spikes by orders of magnitude.

Does the pool have headroom? Does anyone know? Is there a mechanism to instantly deprioritize routine administrative use in favor of operational use, or does the system simply degrade for everyone at once, including the cell that needs it most?

If commanders cannot answer those questions, AI consumption is a readiness issue, not an IT issue, and it belongs in front of the same people who worry about war reserve stocks.

What governance actually requires

The fix is not to buy more tokens. It is to build the allocation architecture that should have preceded the buy.

Govern at the task level, not just the user level. Per-user caps are blunt. A useful control plane lets an administrator set limits by workload class (capping routine document drafting while leaving mission-critical analysis uncapped) so that scarcity, when it arrives, falls where it should.

Route to the cheapest model that clears the bar. A meaningful share of enterprise queries are being served by frontier reasoning models that are wildly overqualified for the task. Intelligent routing across a tiered model portfolio is the single largest cost lever available, and it requires no reduction in mission capability.

Instrument before you legislate. Allocation policy without telemetry is guesswork. Program managers need per-user, per-task, per-model visibility in near real time, not a quarterly invoice that reveals the pool emptied a month ago.

Hold a surge reserve. Wall off a protected allocation that routine use cannot touch, released only under defined conditions. This is war reserve stock logic applied to compute.

Stop buying consumption. Contract vehicles that reward volume are misaligned with an environment where volume is the constraint. Structure around outcomes and capped, prioritized draw rights instead.

None of this is exotic. It is the application of resource discipline the department already practices everywhere else to a resource it has been treating as though it were free.

June's email is worth taking seriously precisely because the consequences were absorbable. A capable workforce adjusted and the work continued.

The next time an enterprise pool runs dry, the department may not get to choose when, or who is left waiting.

John Mark Suhy is chief technology officer of Greystones Group.

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Vantor appoints Cocos to lead US government biz

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:49:00 -0400

Vantor has a new leader for its U.S. government business in Will Cocos, who previously served as the chief transformation officer at the Earth intelligence company since 2023.

Cocos now works as executive vice president and general manager of the unit, Vantor said Wednesday. He succeeds Susanne Hake, who announced her departure from Vantor after having led the business since 2023.

Formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, Vantor’s strategy centers around providing a broad set of spatial intelligence offerings that are tied to its flagship WorldView Legion constellation and other imagery satellites.

Vantor operates the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s primary platform for commercial GEOINT capabilities, called GEGD Pro, which the company touts as having a user base across 250 agencies.

Vantor is also the prime contractor for One World Terrain, an Army effort to create a digital twin of the physical Earth in order to train soldiers, and provides automated analysis to NGA as part of the Luno program.

As chief transformation officer, Cocos shaped Vantor’s push for growth in international markets to support the overall strategy. Cocos worked as a partner at Boston Consulting Group prior to Vantor and is a former Navy SEAL officer, having served in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Army, DHA tee up on-ramps for $11B in tech services contracts

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:46:00 -0400

Army TEIS IV

The window is now open for companies to work on and turn in bids to join the potential $800 million Total Engineering and Integration Services IV contract, which opened for business in 2021.

TEIS IV covers a broad range of information systems engineering services, with an emphasis on cybersecurity and communications. A total of six companies participate as primes on this contract, which three companies won seats on in 2020 and another trio was chosen for in 2021.

Up to 10 new companies will be selected for the on-ramp, with four of those seats reserved for small businesses, the Army said in its Wednesday notice to release the final solicitation.

Bids for the on-ramp are due to the Army Information Systems Engineering Command by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 7.

Awardees compete for task orders across work areas that include planning, design, development, engineering, implementation, procurement, logistics, evaluation, test, sustainment, systems retirement and ancillary services.

The Army has obligated $160 million in task order volume to-date against TEIS IV, with Empower AI as the top recipient of the spend at 65%, according to GovTribe data.

TEIS IV’s period of performance includes an initial five-year base period, followed by a single option for five additional years.

DHA Omnibus IV

The Defense Health Agency has taken a first step in preparing to open the window for 8(a) small businesses to pursue a place on Omnibus IV, its primary vehicle for research-and-development work in military medical efforts.

DHA chose 56 companies in 2022 for the potential 10-year, $10 billion contract vehicle that it set up to bring findings and innovations closer to medical practices for combat casualty care.

DHA is eyeing late September 2026 for the release of an on-ramp solicitation that will be set-aside for 8(a) companies, the agency said in a Monday SAM.gov notice. This timeline is later than DHA originally anticipated, but the agency added it needs more time to implement guidance stemming from the Federal Acquisition Regulation overhaul.

The agency said it has awarded 55 task orders to-date with an accumulated ceiling value of roughly $630 million since Omnibus IV opened for business.

Of those 55 orders, 36 went to small businesses and 11 were awarded to an 8(a) company. Eight orders were set-aside under the 8(a) program.

Omnibus IV’s end user base includes DHA itself, the Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, Naval Supply Systems Command and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

GovTribe data indicates that DHA has obligated $197 million in task order volume against the contract so far. The top five spending recipients are Leidos, Goldbelt C6, Kapili Services, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine and Knowesis.

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What Trump’s tech strategy means for the military, deterring China, and the future of AI

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:00:00 -0400

The newest White House tech strategy pushes faster development of emerging technologies for the military, gives defense innovators more room to experiment, and will broaden the federal market for young defense tech startups. But it also doubles down on a particular approach to developing AI—one that favors a handful of well-connected U.S. tech companies at the expense of other innovative approaches. That could benefit China and slow the U.S. military from getting the tools commanders actually want.

Here’s a breakdown of the winners and losers.

Winners: swarms, deployed AI, faster military technology

The strategy puts a big emphasis on new, tech-driven approaches to warfare, particularly the use of drones and even drone swarms alongside manned and legacy assets. Specifically, it calls for “optimal combinations of lower-cost (and sometimes lower-tech or attritable) platforms that can be deployed in larger numbers and complement more limited numbers of sophisticated platforms.”

Over the last decade, efforts to field autonomous aircraft alongside fighter jets or ships, for instance, have been uneven at best—even when the Pentagon changed its talking points on the necessity for large numbers of low-cost drones—constrained by programs' internal buying policies and previous commitments to other programs' investments. The Replicator program provides a vivid example, hailed as an essential pathfinder but receiving only $1 billion in funding.

The new strategy sets specific “priority areas” for new military research and spending: undersea, space, and AI and autonomy. These priorities are the most relevant to “deterrence in the Indo-Pacific”—as in, preventing China from launching a major conflict. Within those priority areas, it lists “multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence” and various uses of autonomy, from robotics to command and control, as “critical.”

The strategy also takes square aim at policies and practices that slow down military buying of new technologies. Building off other executive orders, it pushes Pentagon buyers to bypass traditional acquisitions in favor of a “mix” of contract types, such as performance-based contracts and other transaction authorities, or OTAs. It also resets the tone for military purchasing toward “faster non-traditional approaches that may involve higher risk but offer high potential reward,” something that commanders, younger defense tech leaders, and even lawmakers have long pushed for.

Perhaps most importantly, it also takes steps to actually grow the market for younger defense tech players beyond just the military. It takes aim at foreign military sales rules and export controls that hobble the sale of much defense tech to allies. That will be especially important for newer defense companies trying to secure early-stage investment to survive. And it calls for other federal agencies to build “streamlined pathways” for smaller companies to at least get their foot in the door, even via partnerships that don’t offer young companies much more than access to federal infrastructure, such as “Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and Agreements for Commercializing Technology (ACTs).”

Losers: open weights, small AI

While the strategy champions smaller, more innovative players in defense, it also weighs in on the debate about what the future of AI should look like and comes down on the side of Big Tech companies that are pushing a specific, energy-intensive, and deeply unpopular future of AI over emerging strategies favored increasingly by researchers. China will benefit from the oversight, Michael Schiffer, a partner at Scalare Advisors and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, wrote on Tuesday for Just Security.

In its section on critical technologies for support, the strategy lists “Foundation models, including large language, multimodal, and world systems.” The section also includes niche tech areas like brain-computer interfaces but omits entirely open-weight models and open-source software development.

Here’s why that’s important:

Foundation models, such as today’s large language models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, represent just one potential method for building AI tools—one that relies heavily on pushing as much data through as much computational infrastructure as possible to achieve something that looks like “reasoning,” but that’s really just plain old probability calculation.

Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei helped to transform that concept from a research effort into a massive endeavor to acquire computational resources and data as quickly as possible. Amodei explained it simply in a 2023 discussion with Dwarkesh Patel. “It turns out that raw scale—more compute and more data—drives capabilities far more powerfully than complex algorithmic inventions or hand-crafted architectural changes.”

A small handful of frontier AI labs, and their big cloud computer backers, are in a literal race for company survival because there’s only so much power, so many chips to continue to pursue “raw scale.” If, as Amodei says, just having more “more compute” and “more data” means having the best performing models, then whoever has the most of those resources can push out any competitor.

It’s no wonder the AI race has become a concentration of wealth and power, in just a handful of labs with their large cloud compute backers. No wonder, also, that public perception of AI has plummeted: just 18 percent of Americans believe it will be a positive force for the United States, one new poll found. But the foundation model approach does have its fans: large-scale U.S. cloud providers who have invested billions in foundation model labs.

The very way the strategy frames the issue plays to the idea that AI has one future and that winning the AI race or achieving dominance means favoring a handful of players. But it’s also a theme that plays out in many of the White House’s policies and executive orders around AI.

Meanwhile, alternative approaches to building AI are emerging. Rather than race to build more data centers and find more data to throw at the problem of AI, they use parameters that already exist that are freely available, called open weight models, as opposed to closed weights that are protected intellectual property. And they use those in conjunction with alternative architectures that make using those models more energy efficient. Many of these alternative approaches to building AI perform almost as well as what Anthropic and OpenAI are offering, and have the potential to do so at far lower energy costs.

Why it matters to the military

The finite amount of compute power, data, and good will when it comes to AI could become a strategic problem for the U.S. military. If public sentiment undermines congressional and financial support for research and development in the field, officials fear, the country might lose its AI edge to China, which has openly declared its intention to pull ahead.

In the meantime, frontier-AI models also create tactical and operational problems for the militaries that use them. Troops and military units in the field can’t count on the connectivity that tools based on large models need. And in a new report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Jake Steckler writes, “Ukraine’s computational architecture, consisting of Western cloud access, domestic data centers, and forward-deployed compute nodes, is already straining as it integrates more AI into targeting and coordination.”

Open-weight models don’t appear in the new strategy, though it does list niche and far-fetched concepts like brain-computer interfaces as “critical.” That’s a huge oversight and a potential gift to China, argues Schiffer.

“China’s advances in open-weight AI have exposed the limits of a U.S. strategy built too heavily on the idea of denying them access to American technology and American markets,” he said.

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How contractors can keep AI missions on track despite supply chain volatility

Katherine Hennessey — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Adoption of artificial intelligence by federal agencies is accelerating rapidly.

Figures from the Office of Management and Budget show more than 3,600 AI use cases underway across the government, a 70% increase over the previous year.

Adoption, however, isn’t the hard part anymore. Achieving the mission objectives is.

Federal contractors and systems integrators play a crucial role in helping agencies turn AI aspirations into real capability: sharper intelligence analysis, faster threat detection, better-informed and executed operations.

But many contractors I have talked to have shared their growing concern that the data infrastructure that supports these AI programs can’t keep pace. Every one of those capabilities depend on fast and reliable access to trusted mission data.

The infrastructure that data depends on is under more strain than it has been in years, as geopolitical tension and manufacturing constraints make it harder to secure, plan, procure, and scale.

When that infrastructure cannot keep pace, contractors cannot move and process mission data at the speed AI models require. Rising data latency and degrading model performance can cause critical program delays. For industry, weak data infrastructure is a direct risk to contract performance, making it harder to deliver the mission outcomes agencies expect.

While industry cannot control global and supply chain instability, they can reduce its impact on AI infrastructure by planning for changing demands, strengthening data resilience, and using existing capacity more efficiently.

Plan for unpredictability

A recent report predicts that lead times for certain infrastructure purchases could extend by six to 12 months. In addition, major U.S. technology companies are expected to invest roughly $600 billion in AI initiatives by the end of 2026, adding further pressure to already constrained global supply chains.

Research estimates that 80% of AI projects fail, with poor data quality and insufficient infrastructure among the contributing factors. Constrained supply makes those existing weaknesses even harder to overcome.

The takeaway is straightforward: supply volatility has to be built into program planning early. Pricing, capacity, and delivery timelines should account for the possibility that compute and storage infrastructure could cost more or arrive later than expected.

That gives contractors and systems integrators more room to adjust before constrained supply turns into a schedule slip, a missed milestone, or weaker contract performance.

Build for volatility

Where possible, contracts should move away from relying on rigid infrastructure refresh timelines. By building in operational buffers, contractors and systems integrators can maintain continuity when resources are delayed or over budget, avoiding the need for rushed, reactive decisions.

Procurement adjustments may provide temporary relief, but contractors also need to help agencies reduce their exposure to constrained supply by improving the efficiency of infrastructure already in place.

Better utilization, data compression, and longer asset lifecycles can recover capacity and give contractors more control over modernization timing. Improving effective utilization from 60% to 80%, for example, could recover capacity comparable to a significant infrastructure expansion without requiring an immediate purchase in a constrained market.

Traditional three-to-five-year refresh cycles were built around more predictable market conditions. This environment, however, is characterized by price volatility, refresh delays, and overprovisioning. Contractors can use this period of supply constraint to build more resilient, efficient, and flexible systems.

More agile approaches, such as hardware-as-a-service or pooled infrastructure, can better align spending with actual demand, reduce the impact of component shortages, and help maintain continuity when market conditions shift.

This isn't standard IT modernization running quietly under an O&M line item anymore – data management is mission critical, and it needs to be planned like it. That means phased modernization: smaller decisions instead of a rigid refresh cycle built on assumptions the market no longer supports.

Contractors who plan this way keep data access and program delivery intact even when market conditions blow up the original plan.

Bolster data resilience and efficiency efforts

None of that works if the data itself isn't available and resilient. Too many federal data environments are still fragmented – duplicated information, workloads locked to specific applications and systems, and no clear view of what's where. Data compression and deduplication, tiering, and lifecycle management reclaim capacity. Better visibility simplifies governance and shows contractors and systems integrators where data and workloads can move as mission needs shift.

Contractors should design data environments that support portability across approved environments. That flexibility can help agencies adjust workload placement when capacity becomes constrained or operational needs shift, without forcing a costly migration or weakening control over sensitive information.

In a volatile market, the ability to adapt to new constraints while keeping mission-critical data accessible, secure, and usable is a core element of resilience.

Contractor readiness matters

Contractors who identify supply chain risk early, tighten up the data environments they already manage, and build in real resilience will keep mission data available when the market won't cooperate.

Ultimately, the contractors who embrace this proactive approach will ensure that vital AI missions remain on track, regardless of the volatility in the underlying supply chain.

Katherine Hennessey is the head of U.S. government strategy for Everpure.

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United Launch Alliance's new CEO and more leadership moves across the market

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:50:00 -0400

United Launch Alliance

Mark Peller, chief operating officer at the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture since December, has moved up to the chief executive post effective immediately.

Peller has been at ULA since its formation in 2006 and led the development of its Vulcan rocket from inception to certification and service for U.S. government launches.

Peller succeeds interim CEO John Elbon, who will retire at the end of 2026 after 45 years in the industry. Elbon stepped into the acting capacity following the December departure of then-CEO Tory Bruno for a senior role at Blue Origin.

Advanced IT Concepts

Janet McKinnerney has joined the technology and professional services provider as chief financial officer, a role to which she brings three decades of experience.

She most recently worked as group controller for Coherent Corp., where she provided financial leadership across multiple U.S. sites.

Her career also includes roles at Alight Solutions, Cobham Mission Systems, Sypris Electronics and Honeywell Aerospace.

AEVEX

Chelsey Thomas has joined the unmanned systems maker as vice president of government affairs, a role to which she brings 25 years of experience.

Thomas will lead AEVEX’s engagements with federal and local government entities and leaders.

She previously worked as vice president of government relations at Booz Allen Hamilton. Her career also includes service as a staff member at the House Intelligence Committee.

Amentum

Khalid Syed has joined the company as vice president of strategic national security initiatives after three decades at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Amentum has tasked Syed with leading its growth efforts in integrated air and missile defense, space systems, and C5ISR — command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Syed most recently worked as senior vice president and general manager of the national security technology sector at Booz Allen.

Applied Aerospace & Defense

Chris Rogers has moved over to president and chief strategy officer at the now-publicly traded space and defense component maker, which he first joined in December as chief growth officer.

Rogers’ expanded responsibilities include strategic and operational oversight across the company, growth-related functions and efforts to drive connectivity between the teams.

He spent two decades at Harris Williams prior to Applied, which completed its $650 million initial public offering in June.

BigBear.ai

Sean Gainey, a retired Army lieutenant general and former leader of the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, has joined the board of directors at this artificial intelligence technology integrator.

The 36-year Army veteran is the first person to have served as director of the Joint C-sUAS Office, which he led for four years to deliver the Defense Department’s first strategy for this tech domain.

In his final assignment before retiring, he served as commanding general of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense.

Cowboy Space

Chithra Perumal has joined the venture-backed orbital infrastructure company as chief financial officer, a role to which she brings two decades of experience.

Perumal heads to Cowboy Space following its $275 million Series B capital raise in the spring to support its strategy for delivering artificial intelligence compute in-orbit.

She most recently worked as vice president of finance at Varda Space Industries. Her career also includes separate divisional CFO stints at Amazon Web Services, the tech giant’s cloud computing subsidiary, and the Amazon Shipping business.

Cyabra

Keith Noble has joined this developer of software to detect fake profiles and follow disinformation waves as vice president of government sales, a role to which he brings two decades of government and industry experience.

Cyabra describes its software offering as one that provides narrative intelligence to government agencies looking to understand influence operations and other forms of online manipulation.

Noble’s career includes service at the CIA, where he stood up and directed intelligence enterprises out of the agency’s Open Source Center.

D&G Solutions

Bob Burnett has joined the logistics and supply chain management services provider as chief growth officer, a role to which he brings two decades of experience.

Burnett announced his new role in a LinkedIn post, writing that he will lead D&G’s business development team.

He most recently worked as CGO at OneZero Solutions, which he first joined as a senior vice president in 2022 after 15 years in BD leadership roles at VectorCSP.

Mantech

Christopher Copeland has moved up to chief innovation officer at the company he first joined in 2024 as chief digital officer.

“Mr. Copeland will oversee the development of next-generation technology solutions that solve our clients’ toughest challenges,” ManTech said in a LinkedIn post on the promotion.

His career prior to ManTech includes 25 years at Accenture’s U.S. federal subsidiary.

Mantis Space

Dale Parkes has joined this builder of orbital power infrastructure as chief technology officer, a role he takes up after 24 years at Boeing.

Mantis announced the hire in a LinkedIn post that describes its strategy as centered around building a power grid in space, which will be necessary to support orbital data centers.

Parkes career at Boeing includes separate stints as chief engineer for programs at the Missile Defense Agency and Air Force Research Laboratory. He spent two years at Hughes prior to Boeing.

Node.Digital

Tim Wisecarver has joined the automation tech integrator as senior vice president for growth, a role to which he brings nearly three decades of experience.

Node.Digital hires Wisecarver amid its push to expand and scale its artificial intelligence and automation solutions, the company said in a LinkedIn post.

Wisecarver most recently worked as a senior director at Leidos.

Red Cat Holdings

Mitch McDonald has moved up to divisional chief executive for the drone and robotic technology provider’s unmanned aerial systems segment, a role that includes the Teal Drones business.

Red Cat appointed McDonald to this role amid its efforts to scale production and meet demand for autonomous systems by U.S. and allied defense organizations.

McDonald first joined Red Cat in 2025 to lead the Teal Drones business. His career also includes roles at Dandy, Triumph Group and Hexcel Corp.

Turning Point Global Solutions

Rich Scigaj has joined the software engineering services provider as chief financial officer, a role to which he brings 25 years of experience.

TurningPoint announced the hire in a LinkedIn post that describes its growth strategy as covering the federal telecommunications, health IT and commercial markets.

Scigaj most recently worked as CFO at Easy Dynamic Corp. for three years. His career also includes roles at General Dynamics IT and Exelis.

Unissant

Zeshan Khan has joined the digital transformation provider as vice president of enterprise solutions, a role to which he brings 25 years of experience.

Unissant has tasked Khan with leading its enterprise architecture solutioning and technical capture function in the national security business unit. This includes growth strategies for Unissant’s portfolio with the Homeland Security and Defense departments, plus the intelligence community.

Khan most recently worked as director of strategy and technical solutions at Peraton. His career also includes roles at Perspecta, OGSystems and IBM.

CAE

Bruce Ross has joined the board of directors at this aerospace and defense company, a role to which he brings three decades of tech and business leadership experience.

Ross currently works as group head of artificial intelligence at Royal Bank of Canada, where he also is a member of the group executive panel.

He formerly led RBC’s technology and operations group. His career also includes senior roles at IBM, including as president of its Canada subsidiary.

Lunar Outpost

John Shaw, a retired Space Force lieutenant general and former deputy commander of Space Command, has joined the board of directors at this venture-backed company focused on space mobility and infrastructure.

In that role at SPACECOM, Shaw led a team of 12,000 personnel and oversaw an annual budget of roughly $525 million. Shaw was one of the first generals to transfer from the Air Force to Space Force in 2019, then took on the role at SPACECOM for three years until he retired in 2023.

Shaw is also on the board of directors at Stoke Space, also a venture-backed firm.

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Peraton wins $953M DISA comms infrastructure recompete

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:19:00 -0400

Peraton has won a potential 10-year, $953 million contract to continue providing communication infrastructure services to the Defense Information Systems Agency for data centers and hybrid cloud computing environments.

DISA received three proposals for this third iteration of its Capacity Services Communications contract, the agency said in an award notice first posted Friday.

CSC III emphasizes on-demand communications capabilities as the agency adjusts its requirements based on mission needs instead of a fixed equipment set, according to solicitation documents from February.

Peraton is tasked with providing hardware, operating software, storage, network management tools and software, automation tools and software and technical services across DISA and non-DISA sites around the world.

Work will take place over an initial five-year base period and up to five individual option years.

Peraton inherited the CSC program in 2021 through its combination with Perspecta, which purchased longtime incumbent Knight Point Systems in 2019.

Knight Point won the first iteration in 2011 and secured the recompete in 2018. DISA has obligated $573 million in task order volume against the current contract ahead of its April 2027 sunset, according to GovTribe data.

Editor's note: DISA updated its award notice post-publication to say the contract ceiling is $953 million.

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Air Force awards 24 places on $920M aircraft equipment modernization contract

Ross Wilkers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:12:00 -0400

The Air Force has awarded 24 companies positions on a potential 10-year, $920 million contract for broad modernization services to help the service branch develop and field aircraft ground equipment.

Air Force officials set up the Next Generation Aerospace Ground Equipment contract to cover design, development, integration and testing work on various aircraft and other platforms. The Air Force received 66 proposals for the contract, the Pentagon said in its Monday awards digest.

Awardees are as follows:

Aero Specialties
ATAP
ATEC
Aviation Ground Equipment
Booz Allen Hamilton
Chase Defense
Coherent Technical
CVI
Defense Engineering Services
DEVAL
ES3
GS Engineering
HDT
Intuitive
Knight Aerospace
Lockheed Martin
MCT Industries
Newton Corp.
Oshkosh
P2 Mission Solutions
PCI Aviation
Suntest Systems
TLD
Torch Technologies

Solicitation documents from December describe the contract as supporting the full lifecycle of air vehicle launch, recovery, and operations and maintenance activities around the world.

Fighter jets, bombers, tankers, airlift platforms and unmanned systems are examples of platforms within the scope of the contract.

Work will take place over an initial two-year base term followed by four option periods of two years each.

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White House S&T strategy calls for new approaches to safeguard US research

Edward Graham — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:00:00 -0400

The Trump administration says the nation’s science and technology research ecosystem needs to embrace “novel security solutions” to ensure the U.S. maintains its global edge, according to a new document publicly released on Monday.

The National Security Science and Technology Strategy published by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy outlines how the U.S. innovation sector should be leveraged and guarded to defend the country. The new document builds off last year’s National Security Strategy, which called, in part, for “protecting the competitiveness of the U.S. economy and bolstering the resilience of the American technology sector.”

To help safeguard the nation’s innovation sector from threats “that could impair U.S. economic and military strength and competitiveness,” the strategy calls for “approaches that protect without inhibiting the productivity and agility of the national security S&T enterprise.”

President Donald Trump previously moved to curtail illicit foreign interference in the nation’s research institutions, most notably through a January 2021 memo that sought to keep adversarial governments from exploiting U.S. science and technology research.

Lawmakers from both parties have also pushed legislation to limit Chinese involvement in federally-funded research projects, and the Pentagon similarly announced on Monday that it called for 30 U.S. academic institutions to review their ties with foreign entities.

But the strategy says research institutions need to take further steps to enhance their threat awareness, including conducting “automated research security vetting” of agency-funded research proposals and performing continuous monitoring of federally-supported projects.

It also calls for “bolstering counter-intelligence support to governmental and non-governmental research centers” — which would give researchers more immediate and timely insights into potential threats — and creating “risk-based review criteria and a repository of sharable information to enhance the efficiency of information collection and sharing among agencies.”

It noted, for instance, that the FBI-led Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team “brings an interagency team of quantum experts and security professionals to fine-tune technology protection and security outreach activities for the quickly evolving quantum R&D community.”

Another section calls for “establishing cybersecurity guidelines for researchers and research institutions,” although it is sparse on the details of what this would look like. The National Science Foundation, for its part, has a research security policy framework that includes some cyber-specific guidance as part of its broader blueprint.

“Given the evolving nature of research security threats, security experts should embrace comprehensive, new, and novel security solutions, particularly where they can be crafted to address unique or nuanced requirements of specific technology fields,” the document said.

The strategy’s implementation section highlights the need to enhance K-12 and higher education training opportunities and bring more skilled talent into the federal workforce — an effort the Trump administration has been undertaking, in part, by prioritizing skills-based hiring over degree requirements.

Notably, however, the strategy references the need to attract more nonimmigrant tech workers to the U.S., which differs from the Trump administration’s prior stance that called for a more restrictive approach.

“The United States will further strengthen its workforce by attracting and retaining top-tier global talent in critical national security S&T fields,” the strategy says. “Agencies will collaborate on using existing authorities to recruit the exquisite talent necessary to ensure the national security S&T Enterprise leads the world in developing and applying these technologies.”

OSTP did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strategy’s inclusion of the need to attract and retain global talent.

Last year’s National Security Strategy said, in part, that the U.S. “cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America’s labor market to the world in the name of finding ‘global talent’ that undercuts American workers.”

Trump issued a proclamation in September 2025 that moved to restrict the number of H-1B visas, saying that the program has harmed American workers. The visas allow U.S. firms to temporarily hire foreign workers, with the tech industry notably using the program to attract nonimmigrant talent. The proclamation attempted to institute a $100,000 H-1B visa fee, although a district court has overturned that mandate.

In addition to calling for the nation’s innovation sector to embrace new security solutions, the strategy said the U.S. needs to speed up its pace of innovation, build up its domestic “technological resilience” and focus its science and technology ecosystem on “maintaining battlefield advantage, countering strategic threats to the homeland, and shaping the competition toward areas of U.S. strength.”

Nextgov/FCW Cyber Reporter David DiMolfetta contributed to this story.

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CMMC works. Now let’s sharpen it.

Katie Arrington — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

I built the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification because self-attestation was failing our war industrial base. Contractors could simply promise they were following basic cybersecurity practices, with no verification behind that promise.

Our adversaries noticed that gap long before Washington did — and they have not eased up since. If anything, the opposite is true.

Nation-state actors and the ransomware crews they tolerate or direct are more aggressive, better funded, and faster than they were five years ago. This is not the moment to loosen the standard. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement requirements behind CMMC should not change, and I would not support it if they did.

But defending a program doesn't mean pretending it's perfectly aimed. Now that CMMC is a final rule moving into real contracts, it's the right time to ask: are we targeting it precisely enough? I don't think we are yet — and artificial intelligence, used correctly, can help fix that without touching the cybersecurity bar itself.

The problem is targeting, not the standard

CMMC's requirements hinge on controlled unclassified information. But CUI determinations across the war industrial base are inconsistent: Two subcontractors doing nearly identical work can end up with completely different assessments because the call still depends on manual judgment with incomplete visibility into how data actually flows down. Some small businesses get pushed into heavy assessment burdens for data that isn't really CUI. Others handling real, sensitive data slip through with a lighter requirement. Neither outcome helps national security; the first wastes compliance dollars, the second leaves real exposure unaddressed.

AI can do the first-pass sorting here — flagging likely CUI from contract language and statements of work and catching mismatches between what a prime contract designates and what actually flows down to subcontractors — far more consistently than today's patchwork of manual reviews. In this scenario, a human with contracting authority still makes the final call. But that human should be working from a much better starting point than we give them now.

Small business is the economy, not just the supply chain

Small businesses are 99.9% of American companies and employ nearly half the private workforce. And right now, they face threats most aren't equipped to handle: ransomware that can shut down operations overnight; AI-enabled fraud that's harder to spot every year, and a coming reckoning when quantum computing breaks today's standard encryption. The quantum threat is already real, since data harvested now can simply be decrypted later.

I'm glad the Small Business Administration is leaning into this. Its Cybersecurity for Small Business Pilot Program has done real work funding training through state partners. But training grants aren't capital, and no amount of counseling gets a small manufacturer through a ransomware recovery or a quantum-resistant encryption upgrade. Small businesses can't get favorable financing for cybersecurity the way they can for equipment because most lenders don't know how to underwrite it.

We need a dedicated SBA loan program for cybersecurity investment — open to every small business, not just those working with the Department of War — to fund things like multi-factor authentication rollouts, endpoint detection, incident response, and early migration toward quantum-resistant encryption, before it's an emergency instead of a plan.

Same mission, two fronts

Inside the war industrial base, use AI to make sure CUI calls and flow-down match reality. Outside it, give the broader small business economy the capital to defend itself against adversaries who are only getting more aggressive. I still believe unverified promises are not a security strategy. But precision and support aren't the enemies of security — they're what make it sustainable.

Sharpen how we target CMMC, and open the door for every small business to invest in its own war footing. That's not lowering the bar. That's making sure the bar is doing its job.

Katie Arrington is a former South Carolina state legislator and cybersecurity executive who served as DoD CISO for Acquisition and Sustainment starting in 2019, and later returned as DoD CISO/PTDO DoD CIO under the second Trump administration. She spearheaded the Pentagon’s initial efforts to create the CMMC program for defense contractors beginning in 2019, driven by a conviction that contractors needed to actually prove — not just self-attest to — their cybersecurity compliance in order to protect sensitive defense data from adversaries. Her commitment to the program has been described as stemming from a deeply personal mission to secure the Defense Industrial Base from cyber threats that jeopardize national security.

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Navy chooses 29 for $400M operational exercise support contract

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:03:03 -0400

The Navy has awarded 29 companies positions on a potential seven-year, $400 million contract for broad technology and professional services in support of operational exercises.

Cyberspace operations are the primary focal point of this contract, which the Navy set up to hire a pool of companies that can help design and build out the exercises. The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific received 50 proposals, according to the Pentagon’s Aug. 13 awards digest.

The contract’s full name is Cyberspace Science, Research, Engineering and Technology Integration Unrestricted Multiple Award Contract. Its period of performance covers an initial five-year base period followed by a single two-year option.

Awardees are as follows:

Accenture’s U.S. federal subsidiary
ActioNet
Booz Allen Hamilton
CNF Technologies
Cole Engineering Services, a By Light subsidiary
Core4ce
CSA Global
Deloitte
DLH
Dynamo Technologies
Epsilon C5I
ExpediteInfoTech
General Dynamics’ IT services unit
Highbury Defense Group
Invictus International Consulting
LATG
Leidos (incumbent)
Maximus
Parsons Corp. (incumbent)
Quiet Professionals (now Endurion)
REDLattice
Resource Management Concepts
Saalex
Science Applications International Corp. (incumbent)
Scientific Research Corp. (incumbent)
Sentar
Solute
Tharros Defense
VSolvit

The contract is the follow-on to the C4ISR Cyberspace Science Research Engineering and Technology Integration 2019, which was awarded that year to nine companies.

GovTribe data indicates the Navy has obligated $337.9 million in task order volume to date against the current contract.

Solicitation documents from February describe how the recompete’s awardees will compete for task orders in areas such as operational exercise design and construction, operations and requirements analysis, concept formulation and development, feasibility demonstrations, and operational and technical support.

The scope of work also includes analyzing and engineering operational, functional and system requirements to establish national, theater and force-level architecture.

Other efforts will cover requirements verification and validation, engineering analysis, technical documentation, software and hardware design and implementation, systems integration, testing and evaluation and demonstration.

The Navy wants awardees to apply a systems engineering approach to development while ensuring secure development practices through methodologies associated with the DevSecOps software practice.

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CISA contemplates whether to hire security software buying help

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:02:53 -0400

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is contemplating whether to hire a contractor to help manage its purchases of cybersecurity software and related tools via a single mechanism.

CISA currently acquires the tools through the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program for protecting civilian government networks and Capacity Building, an arm of the agency that leads federal enterprise cyber governance efforts.

By launching this sources sought notice on Aug. 12, CISA is signaling the start of its evaluation of acquisition approaches that would support roughly $600 million in cyber software purchases per year.

The agency eventually wants that figure to grow to $6 billion per year over the entire contract’s lifecycle, should a contract be created.

CISA is working with the General Services Administration’s Assisted Acquisition Services team to evaluate the market research collected via the request for information. GSA AAS works with other agencies on planning, awarding and managing complex contracts.

In the new notice, CISA describes its desire to bring in a contractor that can aid the agency in managing its enterprise license and materials purchases. The contractor would also work with CISA’s CB team to implement a singular software buying management process and procurement support platforms.

CISA is undertaking this effort as part of its plans to transition away from the CDM program’s current approved product list to a new Cyber Product List and Technical Capability Catalog. The agency describes the latter two initiatives as its baselines for future enterprise cyber software procurements.

The RFI describes the scope of work as covering strategic buying advisory services, acquisition and procurement support, enterprise license management, software asset management, category management, vendor management and procurement analytics. These services would be provided in addition to the cyber tools themselves.

Other requirements include market analysis, historical spend analysis, pricing analysis, procurement strategy development, software category management, enterprise licensing recommendations, and development of cost savings metrics.

Responses to the RFI are due by 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 1.

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GAO tells the Army to reopen $50B MAPS contract

Nick Wakeman — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:19:00 -0400

The Army has to reopen its $50 billion MAPS contract yet again, but this time it is because the Government Accountability Office says the service was wrong to block small businesses from teaming up to compete for the professional services vehicle.

GAO's Aug. 11 decision to sustain part of a protest by Intelligence Consulting Enterprise Solutions is the first ruling in the wave of MAPS challenges to actually force a change to the solicitation, rather than end in a dismissal.

A protest by JAAW Group was dismissed because GAO found that there was no factual basis for the protest. JAAW merely did not follow directions.

GAO denied three out of arguments from ICES. Challenges to the Army's solicitation numbering scheme, ban on the use of classified contracts as past performance references, and handling of pre-proposal questions all fell short.

But ICES' teaming argument is the one that landed.

The MAPS solicitation bars small businesses from forming prime/subcontractor teams to bid, though the Army does allow small business joint ventures.

The Army's position is that the Small Business Act uses the word "or" when it talks about "teams or joint ventures of small business concerns," which the service branched argued lets it pick which one to allow.

GAO disagreed, saying that the that "or" creates a choice for the small business making the offer and not for the agency writing the solicitation.

In GAO's words, the statute "creates a positive right for a small business concern...to submit an offer" using either structure, and the Army "is wrong about with whom the discretion lies."

To make the ruling, GAO also leaned on the broader purpose of the Small Business Act's consolidation provisions.

When agencies combine multiple contracts into one vehicle, they need to take steps to maximize small business participation instead of restricting it. MAPS merges the RS3 and the ITES-3 vehicles.

The ruling also could have implications beyond MAPS. In a footnote, GAO said that the question raised in the protest has “widespread interest to the procurement community" because it has not been decided before.

GAO recommended the Army amend the solicitation to allow small business teams alongside joint ventures, reopen MAPS for revised proposals and reimburse ICES's protest costs.

That means another likely delay for a contract that has already been amended multiple times and drawn more than a dozen protests. The Army had hoped to make awards this month.

Six other protests are still open at GAO. Some decisions are not due until late September and into October.

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Army picks M1 to lead $10B helicopter-school transformation

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:00:00 -0400

A Texas-based aviation company beat out Bell and Lockheed Martin to lead the transformation of Army helicopter training, the service announced on Thursday.

The Army awarded M1 Support Services its Flight School Next contract, a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity worth up to $10 billion for up to 26 years. It’s the culmination of a months-long competition aimed at converting the service’s Initial Entry Rotary Wing school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, to a contractor-owned and -operated model. Officials expect the change to reduce costs by taking helicopters, instructors, and maintenance out of the service’s hands and pushing pilots to focus on aviation fundamentals.

"This is a major step forward in modernizing how we train our aviation force," Brent G. Ingraham, the Army’s assistant secretary of acquisition, logistics and technology, said in a news release. "Flight School Next delivers the next generation of training capabilities our aviators need to succeed in increasingly complex operational environments."

M1 bid as leader of a team that includes Robinson Helicopter Company, Quantum Helicopters, General Dynamics Information Technology, and the University of North Dakota Aerospace Foundation. It was one of three major finalists, including Lockheed and Bell, that emerged after the December call for solutions.

Last year, Congress raised concerns and blocked funding for the flight school effort in theNational Defense Authorization Act, pending the results of a trial program. It’s not immediately clear when the Army met the congressional requirements before it awarded the contract.

“We are honored to be entrusted with this vital mission,” said George Krivo, M1 chairman and CEO, in a press release. “M1 will deliver a fully integrated, innovation rich training solution designed to develop more proficient Army Aviators on time and on budget.”

Defense One reported in April that Lockheed had been dropped from the competition. Bell said in an emailed statement on Friday that they were disappointed in the Army’s selection.

“Bell was notified by the U.S. Army that our turnkey solution was not selected for the Flight School Next program,” a company spokesperson wrote. “While Bell is disappointed by this outcome, we are thankful for the opportunity to participate and our commitment to supporting warfighters has not changed.”

Under M1’s offering, new Army pilots will learn to fly on Robinson Helicopter’s R66 helicopter, which was offered to meet the service’s requirement for an aircraft with a single turbine engine and a rotor that spins counterclockwise.

The Army’s current aircraft, Airbus’ twin-engine UH-72 Lakota, has been criticized by military leaders as being too expensive and restrictive for teaching aviation basics.

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L3Harris promotes Mehta to CEO in abrupt leadership change

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:31:47 -0400

L3Harris Technologies’ board of directors has promoted Sam Mehta to chief executive from his former role as president of space and mission systems in an abrupt leadership change announced Monday.

Chris Kubasik, L3Harris’ CEO since June 2021, stepped down from that position and his other roles as chairman and member of the board of directors effective immediately.

L3Harris said the board determined to enter into a separation agreement with Kubasik after an investigation found conduct by him that was “not consistent with the values of the company as outlined in its code of conduct.” The company added the alleged conduct was not related to its financial reporting, controls, customer relationships or operational performance.

Mehta joined L3Harris in 2023 as president of the communications segment, then added the additional title of president of the space and mission systems segment at the start of this year.

This transition at the very top of L3Harris is taking place in a year where the company announced its intentions to take the missile solutions segment public following a $1 billion investment from the Defense Department.

L3Harris originally eyed the second half of this year for the initial public offering, but Kubasik told investors in July that the IPO is being delayed until at least mid-2027 because of market conditions the company sees as not reflecting the value of Mission Solutions.

Kubasik’s tenure as CEO started with the completion of the integration of L3 Technologies and Harris Corp. following their merger in 2019, and includes the $4.7 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne in 2023.

The pending Missile Solutions IPO is not the only move L3Harris has undertaken with respect to its space business. L3Harris closed the sale of a 60% stake in the space propulsion and power systems business this month to AE Industrial Partners, while retaining a 40% stake.

In addition to Mehta’s promotion, Lauren Barnes has moved up to be president of the space and mission systems segment from her prior role as president of spectrum superiority. Christopher Aebli, formerly president of mission critical communications, was elevated to president of the communications and spectrum dominance.

Lewis Hay III, a member of the L3Harris and a predecessor board since 2002, was elected chairman after previously holding the title of lead independent director.

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Noblis extends space portfolio with acquisition

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Noblis has acquired a provider of engineering and related support services as part of push to expand further into defense, intelligence and space programs across the federal government.

FTS International was founded by CEO John Fitzgerald in 2005 to focus on mission engineering, intelligence analysis, systems integration and other operational support for intelligence and other national security agencies.

By purchasing FTS, Noblis is also looking to bolster both its delivery function from concept to sustainment operations and further aid its technology scaling efforts. Financial terms of the transaction announced Monday were not disclosed.

"Their mission expertise, highly cleared workforce, and culture of technical excellence complement Noblis' longstanding strengths in scientific research, mission engineering, and innovation.,” Noblis CEO Mile Corrigan said in a release.

FTS also brings to Noblis a portfolio in space engineering and orbital analysis. Noblis’ space work already involves systems engineering, advanced communications, modeling and digital engineering, artificial intelligence, and broader science and technology efforts.

KippsDeSanto & Co. acted as exclusive financial adviser to FTS International.

Corrigan joined our WT 360 podcast in April to discuss the firm’s approach to technology transition and overall strategy amid its 30th anniversary.

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Air Force leans on ESOP legislation to sole-source $992M contract

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:48:46 -0400

The Air Force has leaned on legislation that promotes employee-owned contractors in its award of a potential five-year, $992 million technical and management advisory services million contract.

As prescribed by the fiscal year 2022 and 2024 National Defense Authorization Acts, the Defense Department runs a pilot program that authorizes certain follow-on contract awards to fully-employee owned contractors on a sole-source basis.

Under that setup, the Air Force Test Center’s test range and specialized contracting division joined the pilot program and was authorized to move ahead on the new contract with Torch Technologies. The new award continues work Torch performed at Eglin Air Force Base under an incumbent task order, according to a Sam.gov notice posted Monday.

That order was part of the Technical and Management Advisory Services 2 vehicle, which Torch won a seat on in 2022. The Air Force awarded the $1.9 billion TMAS 3 recompete in July and Torch was not on that list of winners, but the new sole-source notice indicates the Eglin work will be folded into TMAS 3.

Torch will continue its broad support of the Air Force’s research, development, test and evaluation activities with engineering and technical services, studies, analyses, evaluations, management and professional services, and ancillary equipment.

Bill Roark and Don Holder founded Torch in 2002 and the company converted to its 100% S-Corp ESOP structure nine years later.

In an August 2025 episode of our WT 360 podcast, ESOP specialist David Blauzvern explained the legislative preference for employee-owned companies in certain instances.

Blauzvern, a managing director at CSG Partners, also explains the inner workings of making employee ownership a reality.

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