Washington Technology

Valiant Integrated Defense Services has sold its operations and maintenance division to the private equity firm Inspirit Equity. The now independent company will operate as Vulcan Government Services and focus on facility operations, maintenance and logistics services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Army officials have selected five firms to build nuclear microreactors at U.S. military bases as a bid to create energy independence, though the nation still relies heavily on imported enriched uranium for such projects.

It would be easy to correlate Saleforce’s prime contracting strategy to the Trump administration’s efforts to forge more direct relationships with commercial technology providers. But the company’s shift from working predominantly through partners to also being the lead contractor for defense and intelligence community customers goes back years.

For more than two decades, I’ve watched small government contractors navigate one of the industry’s most difficult transitions: succeeding. They win. They grow. They recruit exceptional people, develop deep expertise in an agency’s mission and systems, and build trusted customer relationships and institutional knowledge that can take years to develop. Then they become too big to be small.

Nation-state actors are not pausing their operations or waiting for contractors to get their plans in order. They are attacking now, targeting sensitive defense information that can strengthen their capabilities and weaken ours. The Department of Defense recently suspended Phase II of its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, pausing the expansion of third-party assessments for contractors handling controlled unclassified information.

The Civilian Board of Contract Appeals recently found that a contractor may have used Grok to alter financial documents during discovery for a contract termination dispute. The board concluded that if the Department of Veterans Affairs had not “detected the manipulations and redactions to the financial statements, it would unfairly and unknowingly have to defend itself against” a claim overinflated by more than $1.1 million dollars, according to an August 18 filing.

The Marine Corps wants a contractor to move the Camp Lejeune armory out of the world of paper and into the cloud. A request for quotations posted on Aug. 26 is looking for a company to offer an automated armory tracking system that is a software-as-a-service solution. The Camp Lejeune provost marshal’s office wants an automated armory tracking system that will streamline operations as well as maintain accurate custody tracking.

QinetiQ has lost is challenge of a $625 million contract to provide tethered aerostats to the Polish Armed Force. TCOM LP won the task order under the Aerostats MATOC vehicle. The sale to the Polish Army is part of the foreign military sales program. The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground manages the contract. QinetiQ filed its protest on June 15 and challenged how the U.S. Army evaluators assigned weaknesses and risks to its proposal.

As the Space Force takes on new, multi-billion-dollar national security programs, the service has awarded a new contract to keep those projects on track and on budget, Defense One has learned. The service’s Space Systems Integration Office awarded Integrate, a Seattle-based firm, a multi-million dollar contract for its AI-enabled project management program.

The General Services Administration claims it has uncovered more than $13 billion in suspected fraud by federal contractors since launching its anti-fraud task force in March. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is using governmentwide contract data, public reporting, and inspector general enforcement information to uncover the fraud, GSA said in its announcement.