Washington Technology - All Content

ASRC Federal taps insider Manzo as next CEO

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:12:10 -0400

ASRC Federal has promoted a new chief executive from within its own ranks in Mike Manzo, a three-decade industry veteran who has led its defense and intelligence operating group since 2025.

The company said Friday that Manzo’s appointment takes effect immediately and he succeeds Jennifer Felix, who previously led ASRC Federal as CEO for six years. Felix first joined the company in 2019 as chief operating officer, then became CEO in the spring of 2020.

Her tenure as CEO started with a rebranding initiative and included a pair of acquisitions, with the first purchase involving Science Applications International Corp.’s logistics and supply chain business in early 2023 for $350 million. One month later, ASRC Federal acquired Broadleaf to add more technology and professional services for defense agencies.

In the fall of 2023, Felix appeared on our WT 360 podcast to describe the rationale behind those transactions and the company’s philosophy for helping agencies incorporate tech into supply chain management functions.

Manzo joined ASRC Federal in the spring of 2025 as president of the defense and intelligence operating group after spending the entirety of his career at General Dynamics.

His long career at General Dynamics included leadership roles in both the IT services and mission systems business units. He led GDIT’s national security sector business for three years before joining ASRC Federal.

ASRC Federal hit position No. 36 on the 2026 Washington Technology Top 100 rankings, up 11 spots from the prior year, on $1.7 billion in unclassified prime contract obligations.

]]>

Air defense, cloud and propulsion startup investment rounds to note

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:50:44 -0400

Singularity

This developer of air defense systems has emerged from stealth mode following its $80 million Series A capital raise to move ahead on its development and flight testing agenda.

Co-founders Jack Oswald and Shail Giroux, respectively CEO and chief operating officer, started Singularity to produce drones and munitions on a lower cost curve and at greater scale. Singularity cites the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran as highlighting the role of these technologies in military operations.

Khosla Ventures and Felicis led the Series A round that also involved AE Ventures, an arm of AE Industrial Partners that is entering as a seed investor. New Enterprise Associates also is now a seed investor in Singularity.

Other participants in the Series A round included Long Journey, Harpoon, Menlo Ventures, Y Combinator, Decisive Point, New Vista Sunflower, and Soma.

Singularity touts its production approach as inspired by the automotive industry, to the point that it recruited employees from the likes of Tesla and Toyota to join the team.

As Singularity sees the world, automotive principles of building all subsystems in-house and sourcing commercial components help scale production quicker than sourcing various parts from dozens of suppliers.

Spectro Cloud

This provider of software to help enterprises manage their artificial intelligence infrastructures has collected $100 million in Series D capital to aid its product development, go-to-market and ecosystem expansion efforts.

Spectro Cloud opened for business in 2019 to help platform teams and cloud computing providers modernize and manage their infrastructures to account for AI requirements.

The company built its PaletteAI product to act as a single operating model for building and running AI infrastructure, as well as controlling token costs and governing environments at scale.

The growth equity arm of Goldman Sachs’ alternative investments unit led the Series D round that also involved Maximus, which stood up its ventures arm in 2023. Other participants included AMD Ventures, Ericsson and LG Technology Ventures.

Spectro Cloud’s strategy and vision is to help public sector and other enterprise organizations move their AI infrastructures into production across different cloud setups, including neocloud and sovereign cloud environments.

Spectro Cloud cites the U.S. Air Force, T-Mobile and Airbus as users of its platform to manage and modernize their infrastructures with AI in mind.

Venus Aerospace

This startup propulsion system maker has fetched $91 million in Series B capital for efforts to expand its capacity for developing and producing its rocket engine technology for hypersonic flight and space transportation.

Venus Aerospace opened for business in 2020 to manufacture rotating-detonation rocket engines, which generate thrust by using a continuous-rotating detonation wave as opposed to traditional combustion methods.

As Venus sees the world, the RDRE design is a more efficient and higher-performing alternative that can enable hypersonic vehicles and space systems. Venus builds the engines with three-dimensional printed components and other standard materials, all of which are acquired from U.S. sources.

Mercury Fund led the Series B round that also involved Lockheed Martin Ventures, the defense company’s investment arm that focuses on startups and other young companies. Other participants included MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital and Green Sands Equity.

Lockheed Martin Ventures made an investment in Venus in October 2025, five months after Venus conducted a high-thrust test flight of its roughly 2,000-pound-thrust RDRE engine.

Munitions, space launch vehicles, orbital transfer vehicles and lunar landers are among Venus’ touted use cases for the engine.

Lockheed Martin Ventures

Staying with the world’s largest defense company, this section focuses more on what is to come for the ventures arm following its boost in capacity from $400 million to $1 billion.

Lockheed Martin Ventures is spreading its wings to the U.K. and Europe by opening an office in London, which is targeting $100 million in investments in that part of the world.

The idea is to accelerate the insertion of new technologies into defense systems and strengthen the transatlantic defense industrial base, Lockheed said.

Military organizations in Europe are increasingly seeking to acquire sovereign capabilities and strengthen their supply chains.

Lockheed said the ventures arm has already invested in a “number of promising companies in Europe” and expects to close more agreements soon.

Quantum computing, autonomy, artificial intelligence, directed energy, advanced materials and computer chips are examples of where Lockheed Martin Ventures has focused its U.S. investments.

]]>

Why winning is keeping GovCon execs up at night

Chris Crowder — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:30:42 -0400

From government shutdowns to regulatory upheaval to tectonic shifts in technology and even a pandemic, challenges are nothing new to government contracting firms. But the issue that keeps GovCon executives awake at night more than any other nowadays? It’s winning government contracts.

In findings from the 10th annual GAUGE benchmarking report from Unanet and CohnReznick (click here to access the report free of charge) that's based on a survey of more than 1,200 GovCon executives and leaders, respondents most often identified the ability to land government contracts as the issue over which they lose the most sleep.

Much of their concern stems from a fast-shifting regulatory environment in which cybersecurity requirements under Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 and the ongoing modernization of the Federal Acquisition Regulation are fundamentally changing how agencies evaluate contractors.

How, then, to win more government work and find relief from that sleeplessness? As our 2026 GAUGE Report findings make clear, much of it depends on a firm’s ability to manage its responsibilities under key federal regulations like the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) and CMMC 2.0.

Firms that effectively navigate the nuances of FAR and CMMC are more likely to gain competitive advantages over their peers, given how heavily federal agencies weigh compliance in assessing a firm’s performance.

GovCon firms that excel at tracking, understanding and operationalizing compliance responsibilities come across as more trustworthy in the eyes of Uncle Sam and agency contract officers. And ultimately, trust is a huge factor in a firm’s ability to win contracts. Conversely, firms seen as riskier are less likely to receive awards.

Today, just over one-quarter (27%) of surveyed GovCon firms are posting a win rate of more than 50%, according to the GAUGE Report. The largest share of firms, 37%, report winning 25% or less of the proposals they submit. What’s more, the portion of firms winning more than 75% of bids is at its lowest level since 2021.

In the report, we find a strong correlation between regulatory readiness and win rate. For example, firms with win rates higher than 50% are three times likelier to consider themselves at CMMC Level 3. (A majority of GovCon firms say they operate at least at CMMC Level 2 readiness.) While correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, what’s clear is that CMMC has become a gatekeeper for many DoD opportunities, whereby firms that can’t demonstrate a certain level of cybersecurity maturity likely will lose new business opportunities to firms that can.

The FAR modernization compounds the regulatory challenge for GovCon firms. Agencies increasingly expect contractors to demonstrate relevant past performance, a compelling technical approach, proven management capability, and lower execution risk, and do so within increasingly compressed procurement timelines. As a result, winning is less about simply meeting requirements and more about moving quickly and demonstrating value.

For GovCon firms, it’s a perfect storm of sorts, where faster procurements mean less time to prepare and stricter cybersecurity requirements leave less room for error. Contractors who struggle to move quickly and prove performance will lose ground.

Winning Competencies for the New Regulatory Era

Ground lost by government contracting firms that don’t keep pace with CMMC and FAR modernization can be ground gained for those that do. Here’s how firms can turn their ability to navigate the new regulatory landscape into more new business wins:

Treat compliance as a continuous, cross-functional discipline rather than a proposal activity or a series of point-in-time events. By operationalizing compliance, it becomes an integral part of day-to-day operations.
Establish a real-time compliance framework. As fast as the regulatory updates are coming, particularly with FAR, centralized regulatory tracking is critical to staying current with updates and new requirements at the executive and agency levels. Here’s an area where AI agents are proving invaluable for their ability to alert firms to regulatory shifts, interpret new regulatory language, and map that language to contracts and business processes.
Identify CMMC requirements during capture, not after an RFP drops. Greater visibility translates into a more productive and consistently more rewarding capture process. This advance work decreases risk and improves compliance/win probability.
Establish a constant cycle for documenting policies, procedures, and evidence. All the fluidity with FAR and other regulations requires firms to be diligent and consistent with their policy reviews and updates to ensure they track with the latest government requirements. This helps manage compliance risk in such areas as cost allowability, indirect rate structures, and labor category alignment.
Connect IT, contracts, capture, and operations to support compliance. Compliance in today’s rapidly shifting regulatory landscape demands the free flow of information and insight across the business in a silo-free environment.
Invest in automation and integrated systems to reduce manual effort. Tighter RFP timelines leave little room for redundant, labor-intensive work.
Factor their CMMC standing into bid/no-bid decisions. It’s important for firms to consider their CMMC maturity (or lack thereof) when prioritizing and selecting their pursuits.
Understand how FAR modernization reshapes government priorities. Winning firms understand agency buying patterns, competitor positioning, evaluation trends, and task‑order activity so pipeline building, pricing, and delivery track to what the federal government values under the modernized FAR. Winning in the FAR 2.0 era requires speed, with faster opportunity identification and rapid proposal development and response. It also demands quality, with stronger narratives aligned to evaluation criteria and better use of past performance and delivery data, backed by a robust compliance posture that includes centralized documentation, audit readiness and improved tracking of partners, certifications, and requirements.

With the regulatory landscape shifting so rapidly underfoot, qualities like these can give government contracting firms the stable base needed to adapt quickly and compete effectively —and firm leaders a better night’s sleep.

Chris Crowder leads Unanet’s GovCon business unit. He is responsible for collaborating with Unanet customers, partners, key industry stakeholders, and his colleagues in product, sales, customer success, partner success, and marketing to grow and enhance our GovCon customers’ experience with Unanet. Connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-crowder/.

]]>

GSA is eyeing OneGov savings beyond software and tech, official says

Ross Wilkers and Edward Graham — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration is looking at how it can broaden its OneGov initiative to include additional services from participating companies beyond just their technology offerings, according to a top official with the agency.

GSA launched OneGov in April 2025 to offer federal agencies the opportunity to onboard heavily discounted software and artificial intelligence products from participating tech firms by treating the government as one customer.

Roughly two dozen companies have reached agreements with GSA so far, including Adobe, OpenAI and ServiceNow. Some of these deals include price cuts of as much as 70% to 90%, although these temporary agreements are set to expire at pre-determined end dates.

GSA said in May that the initiative has made AI capabilities available for use to more than 3.4 million federal workers, with the departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and State among the agencies taking advantage of these offerings. But GSA is also exploring ways of offering additional discounted products to federal agencies through the OneGov agreements.

“What we're really starting to look at now is, ‘How do we expand beyond software?’” GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch said at GovExec’s Government Efficiency Summit on Thursday.

While Lynch did not elaborate on the types of additional services or products that might be acquired through the initiative, he noted that “many of the companies that participate in OneGov offer multiple products to federal government.”

Even though most of the current products and services offered through OneGov deals have specified expiration dates for their price cuts, GSA officials have said they view the temporary agreements as springboards to longer-term contracts. Lynch said the agency has already identified cost savings of an estimated $1.18 billion since the initiative launched last year.

He added that the approach allows for a more coordinated way “to kind of have much larger engagements that sit under the OneGov platform and benefit the federal government,” which he said will hopefully serve as “a further incentive for industry to work with the federal government in terms of the procurement process.”

Lynch also indicated GSA's interest in putting more effort toward marketing the federal government as a customer to industry, saying "we need to tell our story better as a government," because the perception is that agencies are too bureaucratic and burdensome for many companies.

"When I meet with a lot of emerging technology companies that have products that would be a middle-of-the-fairway fit for the government, and you talk about ‘where does doing business with the federal government sit on your growth journey,’ and these businesses that are valued at multiple billions of dollars, and they're like, 'We'll get to it at some point, but we're growing so fast that we're just going,’" Lynch said.

Some companies tell Lynch that "government's going to be too big of a distraction" to make it a priority in their strategy and "that's a real problem for us," he said.

Part of that marketing push involves explaining changes the federal government has made to "reduce friction" and help "make getting started with government easier," Lynch said.

Keeping government information protected remains a clear starting point for any company looking to enter the government market, he added.

"We can't drop the ball on security. It really matters a lot," Lynch said.

]]>

Lockheed wins $10.5B Special Operations logistics recompete

Ross Wilkers — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:48:06 -0400

Lockheed Martin has won a potential 12-year, $10.5 billion contract to continue its logistics and sustainment support services to Special Operations Command and its partners across the U.S. government.

The Special Operations Forces Global Logistics Support Services II contract, also called SOF GLSS II, covers non-personal services to help the command maintain program support and enterprise management functions.

SOCOM received four bids in total for this recompete, according to the Pentagon’s Wednesday awards digest.

Solicitation documents released in September describe the contract’s three core competency areas as covering:

Streamlined design and rapid prototyping
Production, modification and integration
Lifecycle sustainment activities

SOCOM also sought support for enterprise functions such as facility, supply chain and IT management, security, environmental, safety and health services, field support, and industrial operations to run government-owned/contractor facilities.

Lockheed’s incumbent role dates back to 2010, when it won the Special Operations Forces Contractor Logistics Support Services contract.

Then in 2017, Lockheed captured the current Special Operations Forces Global Logistics Support Services contract at an $8 billion ceiling.

SOCOM has obligated $6.6 billion in task order volume to-date against the current contract ahead of its scheduled August 2027 sunset, according to GovTribe data.

]]>

New EO puts a clock on quantum-safe encryption

Gina Scinta — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:36 -0400

On June 22, the White House issued Executive Order 14412 (EO 14412), Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks. The order calls for an accelerated national shift to quantum-resistant protections across federal agencies, contractors, and critical infrastructure. Some of the requirements of this order are due by late July, so agencies should start now to avoid falling behind.

This order is essentially a government-wide call to arms for the greatest cryptographic migration in crypto history, and rightly so.

As explained in Section 1 of EO 14412,bad actors with large-scale quantum computers will pose a significant threat to widely-used cryptographic security systems. There is a real risk of our adversaries collecting vital information now and decrypting it later, once large-scale quantum computers are operational.

The data being harvested now is highly sensitive and long-lived data, including classified information, personally identifiable information (PII), medical records, trade secrets and more.

It’s clear that large-scale quantum computers pose a genuine threat to cryptography as we know it today. When cryptographically relevant quantum computers (QRQC) become available, it will break public key infrastructure (PKI).

EO 14412 is call to action for federal agencies to start planning the transition of federal information systems to quantum safe NIST FIPS-approved algorithms for post-quantum ryptography (PQC).

Specific new PQC adoption policies

Unlike previous guidance-based policies, EO 14412 contains enforceable requirements. It underscores the urgency of adopting post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and expands the scope to nearly all federal systems.

In particular, the order addresses “harvest now, decrypt later” threats and accelerates key-establishment and digital signature migration timelines. It also establishes new compliance obligations for federal contractors.

It’s not an overstatement to say that implementing PQC will ensure that we all will be able to maintain our way of life in the internet age. A big part of this transition is ensuring that the PQC solutions are crypto agile to enable a smooth transition now and into the future.

Key Obligations for Federal Agencies

EO 14412 expands the scope of previous PQC policy significantly. Earlier guidance applied to narrower groups, including the intelligence community and national security systems. This order covers all federal agencies. It mandates a dedicated PQC migration lead, sets firm deadlines, and extends compliance obligations to federal contractors.

The key deadlines are:

Appoint a PQC migrationlLead: Late July 2026
Complete NIST-led pilot migration: Dec. 31, 2027
Transition key-establishment protocols to PQC: Dec. 31, 2030
Transition digital signatures to PQC: Dec. 31, 2031
Federal contractor PQC readiness: End of 2030

EO 14412 compliance starts with risk assessment, inventory, and testing

With all this in mind, how do agencies make sure they are meeting the requirements of the executive order? Here are some important steps in the right direction.

Conduct a PQC risk assessment. You need to know what your “high value assets” and high impact systems are as described in the EO.

Create a crypto inventory. You can’t migrate your crypto to the new PQC algorithms if you don’t know where you are using them today. There are several good crypto discovery tools on the market today that can help you automate this process. Keep in mind that crypto discovery will be an ongoing activity because new crypto is constantly to be created.

Set up a test environment for your PQC migration. You don’t want to interrupt ongoing activities during the migration process.

Practice good crypto hygiene with your encryption and key management systems. Prioritize your high value assets (HVAs) and High Impact Systems for testing as mentioned in the EO and then transition to quantum-safe algorithms.

Keep in mind that you need to remain flexible by ensuring that the solutions you are using are crypto agile. Although NIST standardized three PQC algorithms in 2024, two more algorithms are being finalized, and another nine for digital signatures are being evaluated.

What to look for in PQC solutions

Federal agencies should look for several core capabilities when evaluating vendor solutions to make the migration process easier:

Make sure solutions are quantum-resistant and future-ready. They must support standardized quantum-resistant algorithms while enabling crypto agility with field upgradable technology.

Solutions should support quantum-enhanced key generation with an embedded QRNG chip, to deliver high-quality, quantum-based entropy. Hardware security modules in particular should be FIPS 140-compliant and should be able to generate quantum-enhanced keys.

Hardware should be hardened and tamper-resistant. This ensures the security of cryptographic keys for sensitive data and critical applications.

Solutions should be purpose-built to support government requirements. That means security from the core to the cloud to the edge, for both data at rest and in motion.

Identity Access Management solutions should use smart cards and tokens. This applies to uses including Common Access Card (CAC), Personal Identity Verification (PIV), High Assurance and Fast Identity Online (FIDO) for phishing-resistant multi-factor authorization.

EO 14412 is the most significant cryptographic policy directive issued in decades. It recognizes that protecting federal systems against quantum-era threats requires action now, before those threats are fully realized. The agencies and contractors that begin this migration in earnest today will be far better positioned when the deadlines arrive.

Gina Scinta is the deputy CTO of Thales Trusted Cyber Technologies.

]]>

CMMC suspension caught industry off guard, but the reasons did not

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:56:05 -0400

The Defense Department’s decision to suspend implementation of the Cybesecurity Maturity Model Certification and put the program through a 60-day review caught many off guard.

CMMC was slated to enter Phase 2 on Nov. 10, when third-party assessments would start to be required for the cyber and supply chain security standard. But that is all on hold as DOD collects more feedback from industry through a new request for information.

“It was definitely a surprise,” said Emil Sayegh, CEO of Cyber Sheath, a firm that has been helping companies assess their CMMC compliance. “No one saw this one coming.”

Many underlying concerns raised by DOD around the regulatory burden and the high costs for small businesses were well known. They have been raised since CMMC got its start over eight years ago.

“We faced these issues from the outset when CMMC was first discussed in Trump 1.0,” said Alan Chvotkin, formerly general counsel for the Professional Services Council and now an attorney at Protorea Law.

PSC was deeply involved with the early development of CMMC and the ultimate creation of the Cyber AB, a group sanctioned by DOD to create and manage an ecosystem of assessors and third-party assessment organizations.

These organizations were responsible for certifying companies' compliance with CMMC and the NIST standard underlying it.

Officials at Cyber AB did not respond to a request for comment. PSC released a statement that will to share industry input and stay engaged with DOD as it reviews CMMC.

David Berteau, former president and CEO of PSC, expressed frustration with the suspension.

“We are right where we were before we started, which is compliance with the standard through self-assessments,” he said. “In 10 years, we haven't made any progress.”

Berteau has also written a commentary for us about the suspension and perhaps where things should head next that you can read here.

Several sources emphasized that while this is yet another pause, this does not mean that CMMC itself is dead.

“DOD contractors and subcontractors still have to be compliant with NIST 800-171 if they're handling [controlled unclassified information]," Sayegh said. “They still have to have an SPRS score that they have to submit.”

Sayegh said that if information companies submit to the Supplier Performance Risk System turns out to be incorrect or false, there can be consequences.

In June, the Justice Department reached a settlement with Logzone to resolve allegations that the company submitted a nearly perfect score on its self-assessment. A DOD audit found that score to be wildly inaccurate and Logzone had to pay roughly $500,000.

Companies still need to build the internal compliance systems and go through the self-assessments, but right now it stops short of the third-party assessors.

“Compliance requirements still exist. They haven't been waived,” Chvotkin said.

“You still have to be able to stand the scrutiny of an audit in case the government decides to audit you,” Sayegh said.

The main driver of the suspension appears to be the cost associated with the third-party assessments and the burden that puts on small businesses.

Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler released a statement praising DOD for suspending the program. SBA and DOD have been discussing the cost burden for several months.

“Working closely with the Department of War, the Trump SBA has heard directly from mission‑critical small businesses that CMMC compliance was becoming an untenable barrier pushing them out of the Defense Industrial Base, even though these firms are the backbone of national security,” Loeffler said in her statement.

SBA estimates that the cost of a third-party assessment can reach $600,000.

Those costs and administrative burdens were well known in the early days of CMMC.

“There was no doubt about the burden,” Chvotkin said. “But [DOD] weighed that and concluded that cyber protection was more important than those burdens. Now I think maybe the math is flipping.”

For proponents of CMMC and third-party assessments, DOD’s RFI and the desire to collect more feedback is a hopeful sign. Comments on the RFI are due Aug. 15.

“I hope they get a wide range of industry input,” one industry source said. “They need to listen to all segments of industry and get the full picture, and not just listen to the loudest voices in the room.”

]]>

Protest count hits 10 for Army’s $50B MAPS vehicle

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:49:49 -0400

Additional companies have joined the protests swirling around the Army’s $50 billion Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services vehicle.

Most of the protests that have emerged since the solicitation was released in June center around evaluation criteria that companies see as restrictive, ambiguities in the self-scoring scorecard, and how credits are applied for small business contracts.

The number of protests now stands at 10, with several companies submitting supplemental protests at the Government Accountability Office.

The protesters are:

Aim for AdVantage
Alpha Omega
Alpha Tech Alliance
Cinteot
Integral Federal
Intelligence Consulting Enterprise Solutions
The JAAW Group
Kearney & Co.
Manutek Inc.
NextGen Federal Systems

Due dates for the GAO decision range from Aug. 13 to Oct. 22, based on when the individual protest was filed.

GAO can combine the protests into a single decision. But given the range of the challenges, the agency is more likely to group similar issues together in a more than one decision.

The Army could also try to end the protests by taking corrective actions to address the complaints, but there may be too many issues for the service branch to do that.

The Army has indicated it wants to make awards in September, but cannot while protests are pending.

MAPS is the Army’s effort to create a multiple-award vehicle for professional services by consolidating multiple contracts into a single mechanism.

]]>

GSA’s draft AI procurement rule has improved but needs further reforms, contractors say

Christian Robles — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:12:00 -0400

The General Services Administration’s proposed large language model-specific acquisition regulations unveiled last month are an improvement over rules introduced in March, contractors and experts told federal regulators during a Tuesday listening session.

But those stakeholders also told GSA officials that the draft rule requires further modifications that clarify technical definitions and align with commercial best practices.

“Stakeholders asked for clarity, practicality and alignment with commercial norms, and this updated draft shows meaningful movement in all of those directions,” Amy Benson, government affairs vice president for Science Applications International Corporation, said at the listening session.

GSA published a draft “Basic Safeguarding of Artificial Intelligence Systems” rule in March before releasing a revised version titled the “Basic Safeguarding of Data within Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence Systems (LLMs)” last month.

If finalized, the proposed rule would require contractors to follow data protection and intellectual property safeguards when they use large language models to process government data. For example, the draft stipulates that contractors cannot use government data to train or fine-tune large language models or inform business decisions.

The proposal applies to GSA’s government-wide contracts such as the Federal Supply Schedule, government-wide acquisition contracts and the OASIS+ professional services vehicle.

The latest GSA draft softened language around contractors’ use of foreign AI components, assigned flowdown requirements based on four general roles within the industry — LLM Developers, LLM System Operators, LLM System Integrators and LLM Service Providers — and axed a specific prohibition of “diversity, equity and inclusion” ideology in AI models in favor of more generally prohibiting “ideological dogmas.”

Contractors said they welcome many of those changes but want GSA to clarify definitions and reform flowdown requirements.

“We would argue that the definition of data, although improved, is still overly broad and must be tailored to align with commercial practices,” Megan Petersen, a senior vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council, said at the listening session.

She added that the definition of data outputs — which the draft sets as “all data, information, [personally identifiable information], any improvements, enhancements, corrections, annotations, or other modifications made to Data Inputs, or content generated by the LLM in the performance of this contract” — is unclear and could create confusion as to when information becomes government data that requires additional safeguards. Petersen urged GSA to ensure the definition of data outputs excludes metadata, logs and other types of information.

Tim LeMaster, vice president of federal engineering at Lookout, similarly told Nextgov/FCW that GSA should clarify what "incidental" large language model functionality exempt from the proposed rules means in practice.

Benson said the proposal’s definition of custom development — which refers to “modifications, customizations, configurations, or enhancements” made in service of the government contract — is too broad by continuing to cover reusable integrator-developed intellectual property. Another concern Benson raised is that unbiased AI principles language and testing requirements are unclear.

“We just totally nailed the unbiased AI principles,” Jeff Koses, a senior GSA procurement executive, jokingly told listening session attendees.

“[I] heard that we need to continue to work on definitions and recognize what falls outside of those definitions… [I] heard quite a bit of inconsistency with various commercial terms, we need to work up to data rights, including metadata,” he added.

Contractors have until Aug. 3 to comment on the draft rule. GSA has only received 16 comments as of Wednesday afternoon, but several industry groups told Nextgov/FCW they plan to submit comments in the coming weeks.

As GSA mulls industry feedback, experts are urging the agency to offer examples of how the large language model proposal would work in practice.

“Adding examples for what's in and what's out, I think that that's generally a good practice, especially with new regulation,” David Timm, a partner at Burr & Furman, said in an interview.

But regulators should also consider a three-pronged test to determine what data requires additional protections under the proposal, Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law for George Washington University law school, said.

]]>

US Geological Survey seeks enhanced AI function to watch for earthquakes

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:31:49 -0400

The U.S. Geological Survey has started market research work to look at acquiring software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to help operators monitor seismic activity, including earthquakes.

USGS’ National Earthquake Information Center operates detection algorithms in near-real time that help ingest data to inform the creations of earthquake information products. Both AI-driven and non-AI driven algorithms are part of that setup and work together across different systems.

The center is interested in acquiring new software to help refresh its AI and ML tools in order to incorporate more true real-time functionality, USGS said in a sources sought notice posted Tuesday.

As the notice says, AI/ML technologies have rapidly advanced in recent years and that movement is driving USGS to take a new look at what is out there.

NEIC’s primary challenges on the technology front cover the need to derive scientific data products from continuous seismic data acquisition systems, analysis systems, data quality tools, and other system health and monitoring systems.

The request for information breaks out software development work into five major areas:

Develop and maintain real-time seismic data streaming and detection systems
Modernize and optimize detection algorithms
Integrate and advance AI/ML capabilities
Build and integrate monitoring, archiving and distribution systems
Support scientific research and innovation

Responses to the RFI are due by 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on July 24.

]]>

Veterans Affairs starts search for cloud-based litigation review platform

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:29:21 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department is on the hunt for a new cloud-based platform that can carry out electronic discovery and processing functions that support VA’s overall litigation review efforts.

VA’s offices of the general counsel, plus information and technology, use systems that do not share either a common collection of facts or chain of custody pertaining to documentation for legal matters.

A sources sought notice issued Tuesday describes how VA wants to fix that issue by acquiring a single, integrated, FedRAMP-authorized cloud platform that can handle the entire lifecycle from intake to tracking and reporting.

The department currently operates two separate enterprise applications for its legal function. One is responsible for handling Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act requests, while the second handles more general eDiscovery and litigation review issues.

An accompanying performance work statement describes the operator base for this effort as covering approximately 400 concurrent and 1,900 named users, who handle roughly 120,000 Privacy Act and FOIA requests per year.

Because of that setup, VA says it currently has to deal with duplicative collection and storage of the same records. That results in inconsistent practices and service levels across different VA components.

The request for information describes VA’s ideal platform as one that performs all legal work on the same evidentiary corpus, chain of custody, redaction engine, legal hold registry, audit log and user interface.

In the RFI’s questionnaire, VA is asking respondents to detail how their offering scales to a large federal enterprise and include any detail about current use cases in government.

VA also is seeking explanations on items such as high-level licensing and pricing models, the cloud platform’s tenant architecture and how the offering could help reduce request backlogs.

Responses to the RFI are due by 11 a.m. Eastern time on July 27.

]]>

Peraton appoints Omar as finance chief

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:27:09 -0400

Peraton has appointed Salim Omar, a 10-year veteran of the company and its heritage businesses, to the chief financial officer role on a permanent basis following a four-month stint as interim CFO.

The move took effect on June 20, Peraton said Wednesday. Omar became interim CFO in the spring following the departure of Ken Sharp, who joined L3Harris Technologies as its finance chief after two-and-a-half years as Peraton’s CFO.

Prior to becoming acting CFO, Omar worked as senior vice president of corporate sector and finance at Peraton. The company credits him with having led large-scale initiatives focused on operational improvements and restructuring.

Omar joined Peraton in 2021 through its combination with Perspecta, where he was VP of corporate finance. He also held the VP of finance role at Vencore, one of three businesses that merged in 2018 to become Perspecta.

]]>

Not again! CMMC's comprehensive review is déjà vu all over again

David Berteau — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:08:39 -0400

On Monday the Pentagon announced that it was suspending Phase II requirements for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. Phase I, self-assessments, will continue. Phase II is paused for “a comprehensive review of CMMC.”

My reaction to this was “Oh, no, not again!”

CMMC has been in the works for eight years now, and it seems to me that all we really have to show for it is companies self-assessing their cybersecurity against a NIST standard and reporting the results of that assessment to the government.

That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that’s been the requirement for more than a decade now, before CMMC became an acronym.

CMMC was intended from the beginning to be a path first to ensuring basic cyber hygiene across defense contractors. That was supposed to be the easier part. Then we would get to the harder part of better cyber protection.

But we never even got the easy part done.

CMMC’s Problems

What has that self-assessment decade seen? Here is my perspective.

1. The cyber threat continues to increase.

Every single day.

For 10-plus years.

2. Our start-and-stop response has had trouble keeping pace with that threat. Both the federal government and its contractors remain vulnerable, as does nearly everyone else in America and around the world.

3. CMMC was delayed in 2019 (when the Pentagon changed its initial approach, leading to the creation of the CMMC Accreditation Body), delayed again in 2020 (halting use of the new CMMC regulation), delayed again in 2021 (halting the entire process to conduct a comprehensive review of CMMC), and delayed yet again in 2023-24 (when the Pentagon staggered the release for comment of two separate rules, issuing the first rule on the SAME DAY as comments were due on the second rule), and now in 2026 for (you guessed it) ANOTHER comprehensive review.

4. CMMC is supposed to address Controlled Unclassified Information, or CUI. The federal government has yet to articulate what constitutes CUI, and a recent proposed rule from GSA perpetuates that shortcoming.

Two More Big Issues

in addition, throughout CMMC’s eight years there have been two overriding issues that have not been addressed.

The first issue is that CMMC focuses heavily on technical data at the program level. There is at least as much risk associated with operational data.

Deployed forces are supported by commercial contractors for everything from food and fuel to transportation and storage. Once an invoice is filled with data on what will be delivered, where, when, and in what quantity, that invoice borders on CUI.

Yet many commercial vendors around the world are unlikely ever to be CMMC certified. No one has addressed this issue. It is barely even acknowledged.

The second issue is that the threat is not just for defense contractors. Cyber threats are government wide. Many of the most significant failures have been in non-defense agencies. Yet, CMMC was only for defense.

We need a government-wide system.

What Next?

What does all this mean?

Since my days in “computer security” in the mid-1990s, cyber defense has been playing catch-up to cyber offense. It’s time for a new playbook.

I am no expert, but it seems to me that the never-ending start-and-stop of CMMC is not enough.

If all we’ve had for a decade are self-assessments against a NIST standard, maybe that’s all we are going to get from CMMC. Standards change more slowly than the threat, so perhaps what we need are faster ways to update the standards against which self-assessment is conducted.

Or maybe it’s time to declare CMMC done, retain self-assessment, and move on to updated approaches to cyber security, including

Better threat detection and response
Increased incident visibility
More robust public reporting
Improved technical means of protection

I hope that the Pentagon’s “comprehensive review” casts a broader net, gets us out of this decade-long cycle, and focuses on system-wide actions that actually respond to the threats of today and tomorrow.

]]>

HTL moves ahead on next-generation radio efforts

Ross Wilkers — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

For Herrick Technology Laboratories, every aspect of its strategy and vision is connected in some way to product development efforts and especially its line of software-defined radios for defense operators.

HTL entered this current phase of its strategy in 2024, when the investment firm Blue Delta Capital Partners acquired a non-controlling stake in the company. Two years later, Chad Kettering moved up to chief executive as then-CEO Acie Vickers moved over to chairman of the board of directors.

In a conversation with WT, Kettering said one of the company’s nearer-term priorities involves its new HTLs-2 radio that is now in full-rate production. HTLs-2 and other radios made by the company are designed with an approach commonly called low-SWaP – size, weight and power.

“We’re investing our (independent research-and-development) funds in developing these, so we’re not waiting for customer demand,” Kettering said. “This is the first of our next generation of software-defined radios, and we’re focusing our energy on enabling a broader range of mission sets and capabilities.”

HTL first started out in 2000 as a research-and-development laboratory and has since evolved into a designer and maker of products for use in signals intelligence and electronic warfare.

Prototyping remains a key part of the equation for HTL amid the Defense Department’s overall agenda for fielding technologies on a more rapid turn, including more reliance on commercially-developed products.

HTL’s newest product could serve as an example of how the defense tech industry can blend commercial creations into solutions for its customers.

Shane Sims, chief growth officer, said HTL integrates the “same Qualcomm chips that are inside” cell phones into the radios.

“You’re literally seeing Moore’s Law and the ability to leverage commercial technology at play,” Sims said. “That’s how we’re able to miniaturize a military-grade capability.”

Another key step for HTL to mature itself as an organization centers on its board of directors, which Kettering said was formerly comprised of internal founding members for the most part.

Vickers and Blue Delta co-founder Mark Frantz are continuing on the board, which has added these additional members:

Joe Dyer -- former commander of Naval Air Systems Command and former iRobot chief operating officer.
Eddie Bair -- former Army program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensing
Ed Miller -- former Special Operations Command PEO for intelligence and information systems
John Slaughter -- co-founder of Digital Receiver Technology
Phil Carrai -- president of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions’ space, training and cyber division

“We’re able to now capitalize on their experiences and guidance in navigating the current customer scene, as well as leverage the folks that they have relationships with industry and the Department of (Defense),” Kettering said. “It’s certainly provided us many opportunities to ensure that we’re aligning in the current direction.”

]]>

General Dynamics IT challenges DISA's Enclave expansion

Nick Wakeman — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:18:40 -0400

General Dynamics IT is protesting a move by the Defense Information Systems Agency to expand the scope of Leidos’ $11 billion Enclave contract.

DISA has added the migration of combatant command IT systems to the Defense Department Network. The original Enclave contract focused on moving the Pentagon's 22 administrative and support agencies to DODNet.

GDIT is arguing that DISA should have competed the new work which the company would have pursued, adding that it can perform the work.

GDIT also questions the reasoning and the process described in the justification document DISA released in June.

DISA failed to conduct a new pricing determination and instead relied on its evaluation in 2022, when Leidos first won the contract. GDIT also complains that the agency failed to describe its steps to remove barriers for future competitions.

Both sections are marked as “not applicable” in the justification document.

DISA also did not use a sources sought notice as it conducted market research ahead of the expansion of Enclave.

In the market research section of the justification document, DISA says a notice was not issued and that the head of the contracting activity approved the waiver.

GDIT is also questioning the urgency of the expansion of scope of the Enclave contract.

DISA’s document cites Leidos’ work in migrating over 40,000 users to DODNet in four years. The company has the “crucial requisite institutional knowledge” of the DODNet architecture that it needs to migrate the combatant commands, DISA says in the justification document.

GDIT filed its protest on July 10. The Government Accountability Office will make its ruling by Oct. 19.

Enclave has been a sticking point between Leidos and GDIT ever since DISA awarded the contract in 2022. GDIT filed a protest challenging how DISA evaluated proposals as well as ambiguities around staffing requirements and the reasonableness of Leidos’ migration timeline.

GAO denied that protest.

]]>

Tech Bills of the Week: Leveraging AI for cancer research; Securing chatbots for underage users; and more

Alexandra Kelley and Edward Graham — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This week’s roundup includes several measures that were introduced in the week leading up to the July 4 holiday.

AI to help fight pediatric cancer

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas is looking to leverage AI capabilities to make strides in cancer research in children by introducing the Accelerating Innovation for Kids with Cancer Act on July 9.

The bill seeks to improve federal government coordination to accelerate the use of AI systems and improve diagnoses, treatments, prevention strategies and cures for pediatric cancer.

It specifically tasks the president to work alongside the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Service to appoint a Coordinator of AI Innovation, who would then identify where the federal government can support pediatric cancer research, with a focus on AI.

That coordinator would be responsible for organizing and improving the data infrastructure that supports cancer research to make it ready for AI analyses, as well as improving clinical trial designs to incorporate multimodal data and AI approaches.

Mandatory chatbot safety measures

A bill introduced by Reps. Valerie Foushee, D-N.C., and Greg Casar, D-Texas, adds to the growing body of proposed legislation that asks for developers to add security measures to their generative AI products.

The People-First Chatbot Act, introduced on July 9, seeks to prevent adverse encounters between humans and AI chatbot through instilling strong safeguards. It specifically prohibits tech companies from using data from underage users, —mainly from their chat logs with the product — to further train AI chatbots. It additionally requires companies to disable harmful AI chatbot design features for minors, limits the application of users’ data for targeted ads, gives users the right to access and delete stored chat logs, requires that developers reveal when users are communicating with AI and and mandates that those developers conduct monthly safety assessments, among other provisions.

“The recent tragedies involving AI chatbots emphasize the urgent need for Congress to ensure AI companies and their products are transparent, safe for kids, and most importantly, accountable,” said Foushee in the press release. “The People-First Chatbot Act makes clear that American families deserve control over their personal data, clear disclosure when they are interacting with AI, real protections for children and vulnerable users, and meaningful recourse when AI chatbots cause harm.”

Spotting AI-made content

A bipartisan cohort of House lawmakers introduced a bill July 2 that would set a labeling regime for content created by artificial intelligence software.

Led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., and Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., the Spot the Fakes Act requires the Federal Trade Commission to work alongside the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a series of technical rules mandating how covered technology companies and AI developers would need to label content generated by an AI tool.

Key to the bill’s mission is to have an AI-generated label be embedded in that content’s metadata.

“Americans deserve to know if what they’re seeing, reading, or hearing was made by a machine,” Gottheimer said in a press release. “This is a commonsense, bipartisan fix — we’re simply requiring that AI content come with a built-in label, so platforms, journalists, and everyday people can tell fact from fabrication.”

New AI application prize challenges

A bill introduced on June 29 seeks to outfit the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 with prize competition programs to incentivize the development of AI in the U.S. and addresses measurable present-day challenges.

H.R.9506, introduced by Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, amends the landmark National AI Initiative Act of 2020 to include a federal prize challenge. The challenge would focus on developing AI solutions for a myriad of fields, including next-generation algorithm design, chemistry and material science, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy efficiency, AI safety applications, mechanistic interpretability, quantum computing and more.

The director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy will be tasked with establishing the prize challenge, acting through the National Science and Technology Council and the Interagency Committee. The secretary of Commerce, the secretary of Transportation and the director of the National Science Foundation would be eligible for setting up their own challenge-based acquisitions and other research and development investment initiatives relevant to the bill’s priority technology fields.

Promoting U.S. quantum information sciences and technology

Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., introduced legislation on July 2 to expand the definition of quantum technologies covered by the landmark Export-Import Bank Act of 1945’s Program on China and Transformational Exports, which sets key priority sectors where the government has committed to supporting U.S. manufacturers.

Titled as the Advancing American Quantum Leadership Act of 2026, the bill would change the current “quantum computing” covered by the 1945 law into “quantum information science and technology,” broadening its application to quantum innovations beyond the computing space.

“When it comes to emerging technologies like quantum, the United States must lead, not follow,” Lawler said in a statement. “This legislation would allow for the Export-Import Bank’s ability to support the full quantum ecosystem, helping American companies compete globally, expand exports, and maintain our technological edge over adversaries like China.”

Companion legislation was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Andy Kim, D-N.J.; and Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

AI at the border

A new bill introduced on June 30 by Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., would establish a pilot program for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to leverage AI solutions at land entry points along the Arizona border. The technology would specifically include an anomaly detection algorithm.

Following introduction, the bill was referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security.

AI for tax fraud detection

Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced a bill that seeks to help the federal government catch tax fraud with support from AI.

Introduced on June 29, the AI Tax Integrity Act of 2026 would enact an AI Fraud Detection Pilot Program, implemented by the Treasury Secretary, to examine how AI can catch identity theft; fraudulent claims for tax credits, deductions, or refunds by individuals or business entities; and tax returns improperly prepared by third parties.

The program is intended to last between 18 months and two years. The report documenting its performance would be created 180 days after termination of the pilot, created by the comptroller general and submitted to the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and to the Committee on Finance of the Senate.

Markey unveils package of AI accountability measures

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — a vocal proponent of AI guardrails — released an “AI Accountability Agenda” on Friday that includes many of his previously introduced measures designed to mitigate potential harms associated with uses of the emerging capabilities.

The senator’s agenda is built around six priority areas, which include: giving power back to workers; protecting the privacy and safety of children and teens; keeping civil rights safe from AI bias; putting humans first in healthcare; safeguarding against energy and environmental impacts of data centers; and sharing the AI wealth.

Ten bills that Markey previously introduced are outlined in the agenda. These include measures to eliminate algorithmic biases, develop AI privacy safeguards for children — including the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act — and curtail the use of AI surveillance and automated hiring and firing decisions within U.S. workplaces.

Markey also previously released a discussion draft of a proposal, the Protecting Communities from Data Center Impacts Act, that his office said “would require data centers to receive a certificate from the federal government prior to construction that affirms the data center has met minimum standards for energy, environmental, and economic impacts.” The proposal is included in the agenda.

Although Markey has not yet officially rolled out that measure in the Senate, Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, introduced the bill in the lower chamber on Friday.

In a statement, Landsman said “our bill makes sure these environmental impacts are studied so communities have the information they need and peace of mind they deserve.”

]]>

Marines eye cloudless networks to keep AI tools running when the cloud goes down

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The cloud connectivity that makes big AI models work is also the reason they won’t work in war. As the Marine Corps explores ways to bring AI tools to the battlefield, it is looking at one software company’s proposal to keep troops computing when broader access gets cut off.

Ditto will announce Monday that the Marines’ Project Dynamis will evaluate their technology for turning radios, cell phones, even drones, into a local network that can keep data flowing and AI tools running locally when cloud access disappears.

“Ditto's position is that we do not leverage a server-client model,” Eric Hanft, Ditto’s senior vice president for public sector and a former Army infantry officer, said in an interview. “If you continue to architect your data flows around that, you never remove this fundamental dependency that, if two edge nodes need to communicate and have to go to and from a server—and that server is not available—there's no communication.”

A digital and data communication failure is a nightmare scenario that the United States has largely been able to avoid in past operations. But over the past two decades, those operations have increasingly focused on the Middle East, where the United States did not face adversaries that were capable of disrupting critical communications infrastructure.

Project Dynamis is the Marine Corps' addition to the Pentagon’s joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, efforts. Increasingly, such efforts focus on binding troops, satellites, drones, and more in a data web to enable much faster sharing of information and, as a consequence, faster and more successful operations. According to Marine Corps documents about these efforts, they test solutions in situations where communication is “degraded or denied.” But details beyond that, such as whether cloud connectivity itself was denied during experiments or tests, are hard to come by.

Marine Corps leaders are more likely to discuss the need to move to the cloud.

“Implementing cloud on our networks is the critical requirement for CJADC2. Without cloud, JADC2 just is not going to come to fruition,” Col. Jason Quinter, who led Project Dynamis as commanding officer of Marine Air Control Group 38, said in 2024.

As sensors—flying, orbiting, marching—proliferate across the battlefield, and as the military charges ahead with ambitious AI plans to better use that sensed data in combat, the growing reliance on cloud computing makes sense.

But Ukraine's experience against Russian electronic warfare suggests that cloud architectures are exactly the sort of target high-tech adversaries will come after first.

That is already becoming a problem for the military as it seeks to put large language models into combat settings. One of Anthropic’s arguments against allowing the Pentagon to use its tools in battle is that if data is wrong or is missing, transformer models may hallucinate the missing pieces. It’s a low-stakes problem when trying to write a term paper, a high-stakes issue in war.

OpenAI appears to have similar concerns, announcing in March that its own military contracts “would not permit powering fully autonomous weapons, as this would require edge deployment.”

The Pentagon has responded to such concerns by looking for models less prone to errors on the edge. And the Marines have added a goal to Dynamis: testing assured communication technologies.That’s where Ditto comes in. Hanft argues that relying on the cloud during a conflict is “going to become a problem” no matter which AI company is making the tools. Local networks can help ensure important data aren’t lost when the cloud goes offline, but the military’s existing peer-to-peer tools are limited and difficult to use, he said.

So Ditto offers a way to use “whatever transports the customer brings—in the case of a commercial environment, that could be the radios that are already built into your phone—and deal with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. We can create a peer-to-peer data mesh with no new hardware, just, you know, your consumer phones.”

That aligns with the Pentagon’s efforts to prioritize commercially available or dual-use technology rather than military-specific tech.

The company was founded eight years ago to connect civilian and commercial devices when their cloud connectivity vanishes, as when, for instance, a business closes its doors for the day because the credit-card machine is down, he offered by way of example.

Now it’s trying to apply its methods to the battlefield. Hanft said that the company has already done experiments with U.S. special operations elements and Nordic military forces. He didn’t say whether the company had worked with Ukraine directly but acknowledged that they have “worked in the past with organizations that are operating within those boundaries.”

"One of the greatest strengths of Project Dynamis is in its methodology. For the last several months we’ve been in a continuous cycle of designing, testing, and refining warfighting solutions—Marines and industry engineers side-by-side—so we can find best-of-breed solutions and get them into the hands of our Marines,” said Col. Arlon Smith, the current director of Project Dynamis, in an early version of Ditto's press release.

]]>

DOD suspends CMMC Phase 2, launches 60-day ‘reform’ review

Nick Wakeman — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:51:53 -0400

The Defense Department has essentially ended the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program by suspending its second phase requirements.

DOD is keeping in place Phase 1, which requires self-assessments for how companies protect controlled unclassified information in their systems. But DOD said Monday it is suspending Phase 2, which was to begin on Nov. 10 and requires third-party certifications.

DOD is also launching a review of CMMC to make sure it aligns with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acquisition initiatives, which prioritizes speed, and lowering barriers for new entrants. The Acquisition Transformation System directives also aim to replace bureaucratic compliance with what DOD calls “scalable, resilient cybersecurity measures.”

The CMMC program got its start during the first Trump administration and was revised and streamlined during the Biden administration. CMMC has been envisioned as a cyber and supply chain security standard for the defense industrial base.

According to DOD's Monday statement, the department is responding to complaints that CMMC was increasing compliance costs and adding bureaucratic burdens.

The Small Business Administration also reported that CMMC compliance had caused some companies to leave the defense industrial base, which DOD said is delaying the deliveries of critical capabilities to operators.

"In support of Secretary Pete Hegseth's directive to reduce compliance barriers for small and medium sized businesses, we are today suspending the CMMC Phase II requirements and initiating a 60-day study of the future of this program," said DOD Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies.

Davies said that cybersecurity and operational resilience are critical priorities.

“We believe the DIB can achieve both, while we reduce unnecessary government red tape,” she said.

Phase 3 of CMMC, which was to begin in November 2027, and Phase 4 for full implementation are also all suspended.

In the meantime, the department said it would rely on “self-assessments and select government-led assessments.”

DOD's announcement said that Davies made the decision.

“The CIO's decision ensures we maintain a strict security baseline while removing paralyzing costs and keeping innovators and competition growing in the defense supply chain," said Michael Duffey, defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.

DOD has also formed a CMMC Reform Task Force to conduct a review of the certification program. Part of their role will be to review comments in responses to a request for information, which DOD posted Monday.

The department wants feedback from companies on cost drivers, administrative burdens tied to CMMC compliance, and which NIST 800-171 security controls deliver meaningful risk reduction.

DOD also wants to know know how companies are already using commercial cybersecurity tools and managed services, and how the department might recognize those in a compliance framework instead of requiring separate assessments.

Responses to the RFI are due Aug. 14.

]]>

Every capability needs a mission story

Katie Helwig — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:27:02 -0400

A worldwide communications upgrade was postponed during its final stages because of a communications cable.

Not the software.

Not the installation.

Not the people.

A communications cable.

The cable had been manufactured to an older specification and wasn’t compatible with the upgraded equipment. The dry run did exactly what it was designed to do—it identified a critical issue before implementation. The upgrade was postponed until the problem could be corrected.

To most people, it was just a cable.

To the leaders responsible for mission success, it represented operational risk.

I remember those conversations well.

As the spouse of an Air Force officer for more than two decades, I had a front-row seat to the conversations that followed him home after long days—and sometimes long nights. More than a decade after his retirement, those conversations still shape how I think about leadership, mission, and marketing.

Around our on-base neighborhoods, conversations rarely centered on organizational charts, budgets, or management structures. They were about airplanes. Missile launches. Satellites. Communications. Mission success.

Over time, I noticed something.

The higher the rank, the closer the conversation got to the mission.

Senior leaders weren’t preoccupied with individual components. They focused on outcomes. They understood that every component mattered—but only because of the role it played in accomplishing the mission.

That lesson stayed with me long after military life and into my work helping government contractors grow.

Too often, we market the communications cable. We lead with our certifications, contract vehicles, technical capabilities, years in business, differentiators, and corporate achievements. Those are important. They demonstrate capability and credibility.

But they answer only one question:

What do you do?

Government buyers are asking a different question.

How will what you do help us accomplish the mission?

That distinction changes everything.

Federal agencies don’t buy products and services in isolation. They buy confidence that those products and services will enable successful mission outcomes. Whether the requirement is cybersecurity, engineering, recruiting, logistics, program management, or a communications cable, the evaluation ultimately comes down to reducing risk and increasing confidence that the mission will succeed.

That’s why I’ve come to believe that marketing occupies a much more strategic role than we often give it credit for.

Over the past decade I’ve watched business development, capture, operations, HR, finance, security, proposal, and leadership each contribute something essential to winning work. Every one of those functions creates evidence that an organization can be trusted.

Marketing’s role isn’t simply to communicate that evidence. Marketing’s role is to connect it to the customer’s mission. That realization became the foundation for a framework I call Proof Point Marketing.

At its core, Proof Point Marketing is about building trust through mission-focused marketing. Every organization possesses proof.

Past performance.

Operational maturity.

Experienced people.

Successful delivery.

Customer relationships.

Technical capability.

Innovation.

Financial strength.

Security and compliance.

The challenge isn’t collecting those proof points. The challenge is helping customers understand why they matter. Every capability has a mission story. A recruiting firm doesn’t simply fill positions. It strengthens mission readiness.

A cybersecurity company doesn’t simply implement controls. It protects mission continuity.

A program management contractor doesn’t simply manage schedules. It enables mission execution.

The communications cable wasn’t important because it was a cable. It was important because, without it, the mission could not move forward.

That’s the lesson I believe many of us overlook in government contracting. We spend tremendous energy explaining what we do. We spend far less time explaining why what we do matters.

Organizations that consistently earn customer trust don’t just describe their capabilities. They demonstrate how those capabilities contribute to mission success. That’s the difference between product-focused marketing and mission-focused marketing. It’s also the difference between creating awareness and earning trust.

As government contractors compete in an increasingly crowded market, differentiation will come from more than capabilities, certifications, or contract vehicles. It will come from demonstrating a clear understanding of the customer’s mission—and communicating how your organization contributes to its success.

So, before your next website refresh…Before your next capability statement…Before your next customer meeting…Before your next proposal…Ask a different question.

Not:

What are we selling?

Ask:

What mission are we helping our customer accomplish?

Because government buyers don’t simply buy products or services.

They buy confidence.

They buy trust.

They buy mission success.

Every capability has a mission story. The organizations that tell it well begin earning trust long before they earn the contract.

That’s the essence of Proof Point Marketing.

Katie Helwig is president of Mild Red LLC. Her career spans 20+ years in sales, marketing, and business growth, including the last decade in GovCon. She helps government contractors turn acquisition strategy into practical growth through OASIS+, GSA MAS, GWACs, capture strategy, market intelligence, and go-to-market planning. As a military spouse, she gained an early appreciation for the people behind the mission—an experience that continues to shape her perspective today.

]]>

Leidos layoff notices hit 305 people in non-customer roles

Nick Wakeman — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:38:03 -0400

Leidos notified 305 employees last month that their roles were being eliminated “due to ongoing changes and opportunities in our business environment.”

The layoff notices are part of organizational changes the company is making and aim to “help us to operate more efficiently and best position us for the future,” a Leidos spokesman said.

All of the 305 affected employees work in “indirect” positions, so they were not directly involved with government agencies or charge their time to customers.

“We have already placed, or are in the process of placing, several dozen of these people into new direct roles within Leidos,” the spokesman said. “Therefore, we expect the actual number of layoffs to be significantly lower than the total notices issued.”

Leidos has approximately 50,000 employees around the world, so the layoffs represent 0.61% of its workforce.

While a relatively small number, the company has been ravaged on online discussion boards for how the layoffs were handled with complaints of little warning and impersonal communications.

The Leidos spokesman said that for the affected employees, the company is offering severance payments and outplacement assistance.

“We are grateful to each colleague affected by these reductions, and we are committed to supporting them through this transition,” he said.

Leidos is not alone in having to make layoffs in a market still feeling the effects of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Last year, Booz Allen Hamilton announced a 7% workforce cut that impacted 2,500 people.

]]>

HHS seeks small business support for future vendor management office

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:32:29 -0400

The Health and Human Services Department has launched a search for qualified small businesses that could help stand up a office responsible for managing HHS’ relationships with enterprise software vendors.

HHS’ future Vendor Management Office would be responsible for overseeing the department’s licensing agreements, many of which fall under blanket purchase agreements and enterprise license agreements. The department wants to increase its posture in areas such as cost management, transparency and optimization of software investments.

In a sources sought notice posted Friday, HHS is seeking capability statements from small businesses who can demonstrate experience in working with software vendors on behalf of their government customers.

All categories of small businesses are being encouraged to respond including 8(a), service-disabled/veteran-owned, HUBZone, small disadvantaged and veteran-owned.

The VMO would be a part of HHS’ office of the chief information officer, which says it needs a contractor that can handle flexible assignments and ad-hoc staffing needs to support IT acquisition efforts.

Examples of key staffing positions for this future contract would include project managers, program managers, acquisition specialists, program outreach and communications specialists, emerging technology specialists and licensing specialists.

Responses are due to DHS by 5 p.m. Eastern time on July 20.

]]>

TOP 100: LMI's commercial tech approach hinges on the business model

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:29:47 -0400

For all the conversations about federal agencies purchasing and adopting more commercial technology, they inevitably turn to how problems that exist in the government ecosystem simply do not exist in commercial markets.

But as LMI and Alex Adamczyk see the world, that dynamic does not need to interfere with the use of commercial-like techniques and business models to develop and integrate tech tools for agencies.

“No one else in the world outside the government has this problem, that doesn’t mean we still can’t build software the same way a VC (venture-backed company) would talk to users, understand it, don’t charge them anything, build the prototypes, see how they like it,” said Adamczyk, LMI’s vice president of sales engineering and rapid prototyping. “Once you have a working tool, then a customer buys that, funds it, buys a license to trust it, and you can still capture all of the goodness from the government perspective of de-risking the technology.”

LMI hits Position No. 73 in the 2026 Washington Technology Top 100 rankings, up four spots from the prior year, with $449.3 million in unclassified prime contract obligations.

One fundamental question arising out of the government’s push for more commercial tech zeroes in on the customer’s tolerance of failure. In essence, is it possible for agencies to get a 100% solution and buy it in a commercial-like manner?

Adamczyk pointed to LMI’s work with the Army on its Next-Generation Command and Control effort, also called NGC2, as a prime example of where the answer to that question is “Yes.”

NGC2 is the Army’s major modernization effort aimed at replacing fragmented battlefield systems with a single, common baseline configuration for communications and data sharing.

Anduril is the prime contractor for establishing that data baseline and worked with LMI to help carry out a rapid application development pilot. LMI provided its SHEPRD force protection app that is designed to fuse asset data, terrain effects and threat information into a three-dimensional visualization.

The need to defend people and infrastructure is unique to government, but Adamczyk said LMI followed the commercial business model and approach by talking to users on the ground and discovering what their needs are.

This took place during the Army’s Ivy Sting exercises for testing, evaluating and refining emerging digital battlefield tech in high-pressure scenarios.

“They brought (SHEPRD) out to Ivy Sting, they tried it, the users gave a bunch of feedback on the tool and the government spent zero dollars,” Adamczyk said. “All of that was our investment dollars up front.”

Five weeks later, the Army asked LMI to return for another Ivy Sting exercise and still spent nothing on the technology. Another five weeks later, the Army asked to put the software tool into classified networks.

Adamczyk said that two years ago, that timeline would have been “an impossible ask for the government.”

Fast forward to today and the landscape is very different with LMI’s investments in the software itself, its DevSecOps development environment and experience in building a tech company-like culture.

“(It means that we have all these people that already know how to build secure applications, the tooling to build secure applications, the process to get containerized software hooked onto a secret network, the people who already have all the credentials,” Adamczyk said. “So when the customer said ‘Can you be on (classified) in five weeks,’ we said ‘Of course, absolutely.’”

LMI’s tech-focused culture has spread out from its Forge technology studio that was an incubator for helping employees explore and test new ideas. Adamczyk described Forge as more of an “art of the possible exploration” hub versus one that focuses on production.

LMI has since reorganized itself to make Forge more of a company-wide effort that puts human-centered design, rapid prototyping and idea exploration at the forefront.

When Forge was its own thing, only a select few were chosen to be part of an innovation team and others were left out.

“The new model is, everyone is expected to do this, everyone should be doing it,” Adamczyk said. “We're giving you the tools, we're giving you the technology to go do it. Whether you are on the rapid prototyping team full-time to do this, or out on client site, we're all going to do this the same way.”

( The July 20 episode of our WT 360 podcast will feature the full conversation with Adamczyk that includes his explanations about Forge’s evolution, the bigger picture of how LMI seeks to align its tech and business roadmaps with those of its customers, as well as what makes for a true culture of innovation )

]]>

WT 360: Odyssey Systems and the landscape’s shifts in speed, decision authorities

Ross Wilkers — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

If 2025 and 2026 have told us anything, it is that the government no longer sees the decades-long status quo of acquisition as acceptable anymore because the world is too different now.

Matt Kasberg, chief executive of Company No. 73 on our 2026 Top 100, joins for this episode to explain how Odyssey Systems works with the defense acquisition community and provides an industry point-of-view on all the changes to that function of government.

In Kasberg’s words, “acquisition is a warfighting function” and that requires a keen understanding of demand signals from operators. The Pentagon’s emphasis on speed and a different setup of decision authorities are part of the equation too, as Kasberg explains to our Ross Wilkers.

How did Odyssey expand from 300 to 1,500 employees over a decade? Kasberg tells the growth story as one that required a mix of moves he calls “Stress and Stretch” and “New Horizons.”

]]>

Census Bureau sets industry day as 2030 planning gets underway

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:59:57 -0400

The Census Bureau is planning an industry for letter this month to explain more of its strategy for the 2030 population tally.

The agency released draft solicitation documents in April and received a large amount of questions.

Because of that, the bureau is hosting an industry day for what could be a $1 billion small business vehicle for up to 10 years. The agency is pushing to release a solicitation in August.

The contract will be a series of multiple-award blanket purchase agreements. One will be an enterprise BPA to support all bureau operations. It will cover tasks such as application development, data science and data management.

A separate pair of single-award BPAs will support the decennial program and geospatial initiatives.

The fourth BPA will be multiple-award and have three task areas – program management, IT program and project management, and architecture and engineering.

The industry day is planned for July 21 and will be virtual. No live Q&A will be conducted. The agency will post event materials on Sam.gov after the event.

Click on this link to register.

]]>

Navy teases next step in key drone boat program

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Navy plans to launch the next phase of its marketplace for high-capacity, medium-sized drone boats on August 1, according to a contract notice.

The medium unmanned surface vessel, or MUSV, program “uses modular design principles to create adaptable and resilient solutions that can effectively counter evolving threats,” the July 7 notice states. “Interested parties with expertise in vessel construction, autonomy, perception systems and complex maritime problem solving experience are invited to participate in this opportunity.”

Earlier this year, the Navy changed its approach to buying medium unmanned surface vessels, favoring a marketplace format and spurring a competition and sea trials.

The coming request for prototype proposals will have “detailed requirements for high-capacity MUSV solutions used for logistics support and capable of transporting containerized payloads,” the Navy wrote in the notice.

The announcement comes as the Pentagon stands up new oversight for autonomous systems across all the services, with MUSVs as an exception.

“The MUSV continues to be a strictly Navy-led program,” a Navy spokesperson told Defense One. “We will evaluate all requirements and release recurring marketplaces as the fleet demand signal evolves, ensuring our warfighters maintain an operational advantage.”

The Navy is working with the new Pentagon office for non-MUSV programs.

“The Navy is partnering with the [Pentagon’s direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned and autonomous systems] to streamline acquisition, enhance joint interoperability, and accelerate delivery of autonomous capabilities to the warfighter. While transitioning decision authority for select unmanned vessels to the DRPM, the Navy maintains stewardship over major programs of record,” the spokesperson said. “To ensure operational readiness and theater compatibility, Navy leaders are aligning all remaining programs with joint data standards, providing the critical personnel, resource support, and technical expertise required for a swift and successful stand-up."

]]>