Consolidation and “common goods and services” dominate the discussion around how the federal government wants to revamp its contracting functions, including moves to put the General Services Administration at the center of it all.

Leo Alvarez and Dylan Schreiner, respectively principal and GovCon senior manager at Baker Tilly, are fielding many questions from industry clients on what this landscape looks like and how to map their business strategies to it.

In this episode, Leo and Dylan walk our Ross Wilkers through some of the big-ticket vehicles to watch in 2026 and how they help illustrate the government’s push to make contracting more straight-forward for every stakeholder.

Navigating a world of fewer contracting officers and other key acquisition pros inside government also features in the discussion, plus what this all means for small businesses.

GSA quietly rolls out CMMC-like cybersecurity framework for contractors

New OMB memo lays out GSA's plan to consolidate contracts

NITAAC finally pulls the plug on CIO-SP4

GSA re-opens OASIS+ to new bids, shifts to continuous approach

GSA to take over SEWP VI contract ‘sooner rather than later’

Alliant 3's final solicitation hits the streets

Army gets moving again on bundled recompete of professional services, IT vehicles

Air Force Research Lab opens proposal window for $10B vehicle

Pentagon halts $15B Advana recompete draft solicitation

Pressure points on defense companies from their Pentagon customer to invest more and do business differently than before are coming from multiple levels of leadership, including President Trump himself.

Lauren Williams, business editor at our partner publication Defense One, canvasses the perspectives and opinions of industry pros on that matter to help put together the Defense Business Brief newsletter that goes out every Monday.

Lauren joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to break down those different pressure points, including Trump’s executive order barring companies from stock repurchases and issuing dividends until they invest more in tech development and production.

But as Lauren also explains, that executive order is only one of several examples of the U.S. military customer taking a more direct involvement in shaping the kind of industrial base it wants.

WT 360: Defense One's Lauren Williams on the new world order of acquisition

DOE seeks batteries with four times the juice

Defense Business Brief: Thales’ frigate pivot + 2026 lookahead with Leonardo DRS

Defense Business Brief: Exec order fallout; $1B rocket-maker deal; Acquisition changes, and more

Trump lambastes defense CEOs over pay, stock buybacks

Defense Business Brief: US-made biotech; Rocketdyne; Hegseth’s industry tours

‘Very, very strange time’: After a big 2025, what’s next for the defense industry?

Hegseth hints at higher defense budgets as OMB says another reconciliation bill is possible

Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

Why DOD is so bad at buying software

Commercial technology is front-and-center of everyone’s mind across the public sector ecosystem these days, but history shows that agencies have moved slow on the acquisition and adoption fronts here.

Sheila Duffy, founder and chief executive of Greystones Group, views these efforts as grounded in collaboration as customer and contractor both have to agree on the roadmap for development and implementation.

Duffy joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to go over keys for good collaborations with agencies on rolling out modern tools and how Small Business Innovation Research programs can be a pathway to accomplish that.

Any conversation about commercial tech in government has to include security. This one is no exception.

Post-shutdown recovery is one item carrying over from calendar year 2025 into 2026 and the chance of another funding stoppage happening on Jan. 30 is not zero percent.

That here-and-now is the starting point of this episode where Stephanie Smith, GovCon industry senior analyst and valuation services director at RSM, takes us through some of the major themes and talking points that will shape the ecosystem in 2026.

How do we define the “non-traditional contractor” and what do their prospects look like? As Steph tells our Ross Wilkers, technical definitions and terms for talking about these companies are moving targets.

Steph and Ross also went over artificial intelligence’s impacts to contractors’ business models, key macroeconomics and industrial policy developments for GovCon to monitor, and qualitative drivers of true value in a business.

The spring of 2024 was a turning point for Nightwing, when the business separated out of its then-parent RTX to become a standalone company focused on cybersecurity and intelligence solutions.

Chris Jones joined Nightwing later that fall as chief technology officer following service as the CIA’s associate deputy director for science and technology. Jones joins for this episode to put into perspective how Nightwing has sought to carve out its own path in the market and priority areas for the company going forward.

In talking with our Ross Wilkers, Jones also explains the role of companies like Nightwing in helping their government agencies customers navigate changes in how they operate even if the overall missions remain the same.

Artificial intelligence and other automation technologies in the cyber landscape is also on the discussion agenda. All tech conversations end back up at AI these days, after all.

Nightwing acquires managed security services provider

Nightwing appoints Coleman as chief executive

What the mystery buyer of RTX's cyber business is getting

American Systems opened for business in 1975 and transitioned to an employee stock ownership plan 15 years later, a model that makes it one of the market’s largest 100% ESOP companies.

CEO John Steckel joins for this episode to help mark American Systems’ 50th anniversary and explains some moves it has made this year to set the company up for the next 50, including its largest-ever acquisition.

In talking with our Ross Wilkers, Steckel lays out what the purchase of Epsilon brings to American Systems and larger trends in managed services that led to the transaction. Secured data centers are part of that equation too and increasingly reflect larger conversations in society, as Steckel explains.

Of course, American Systems’ status as an ESOP features in the conversation too. American Systems (No. 87) is one of three ESOP companies on the 2025 WT Top 100 ranking alongside Torch Technologies (No. 66) and DCS Corp. (No. 77).

In his Nov. 7 address to industry, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out what the U.S. military wants from its contractors and wholesale changes the Pentagon is carrying out to make agile acquisitions a reality.

Lauren Williams, senior editor at Defense One who covers the industrial base, was there in-person and joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to walk through those structural changes that prior Defense Department leaders have spoken about for years.

One major theme of that dialogue has been DOD’s desire to have more commercial technologies, which has been easier said than done. But as Lauren explains, the push to “go commercial” is more than just about the product being bought.

Also on this episode’s discussion agenda: what the defense industrial base has been up to during the shutdown and why prototyping is becoming more popular across the ecosystem.

Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

Defense tech companies will weather the shutdown. But what happens next?

Experts see promise, risk in Pentagon’s draft acquisition reforms

Meet the White House pick to conquer the ‘Valley of Death’

With cautious optimism, some defense firms lock in on prototypes to drive demand