Lockheed Martin made the decision to terminate their agreement to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne, following the FTC lawsuit filed late last month that intended to block the deal.
“Our planned acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne would have benefitted the entire industry through greater efficiency, speed, and significant cost reductions for the U.S. government,” said Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and CEO James Taiclet. “However, we determined that in light of the FTC’s actions, terminating the transaction is in the best interest of our stakeholders. We stand by our long heritage as a merchant supplier and trusted partner and will continue to support Aerojet Rocketdyne and other essential suppliers in the Defense Industrial Base still overcoming the challenges of the pandemic.
“Moving forward, we will maintain our focus on the most effective use of capital with the highest return on investment, including our ongoing commitment to return value to shareholders. We remain confident in our company’s strong foundation and growth potential as several exciting projects enter production.
Lockheed Martin continues to be a key player in national security – in no small part due to the 114,000 dedicated employees. While mergers and acquisitions have been a growth strategy for contractors in the national security space, time will tell if this response from the FTC will be the norm or just a one-time issue.
Layoffs Impacting the Cleared Industry
| Peloton |
While the Peloton layoff situation doesn’t serve up 2,800 potential cleared employees to hire, it does provide some interesting insight. Not only is it clear that organizational growth due to a pandemic demand will inevitably snap back, but it also highlights the value of networking and crowdsourcing. Following the layoffs, the crowds surrounded the bewildered employees – in part due to one ex-Peloton employee who messaged the world on LinkedIn and created a Google Form to get information from impacted employees. Peloton has also responded to the crowdsourcing initiative by supporting their employees and providing various severance packages. Business decisions happen, but the human response to it can be key. So, don’t ignore those networks that you have, and lend a hand when you see others lose their jobs. |
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Hiring impacting the Cleared Industry
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KBR |
While KBR has almost 400 openings around the country, right now, they gave over 30 openings just in Alabama. And recently, KBR was awarded a $207 million task order to conduct multi-disciplined analyses and develop recommendations to enhance the capabilities of the Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target (PATRIOT) missile defense system. KBR was awarded this contract under the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center’s (DoD IAC) multiple-award contract vehicle designed to develop and create new knowledge for the DoD.
Under the scope of this task order, KBR will support modeling and simulation efforts for surveillance, guidance, fire control, engagement decision logic, interceptor flyout, seeker, and warhead performance to analyze overall system performance effectively and efficiently. KBR will perform extensive and complex analyses; studies; performance runs; actual live fire, search, track, and flight test missions; hardware-in-the-loop testing; and development and test activities to validate and verify full ground and missile system performance. KBR was awarded this contract under the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center’s (DoD IAC) multiple-award contract (MAC) vehicle. These DoD IAC MAC task orders (TOs) are awarded by the U.S. Air Force’s 774th Enterprise Sourcing Squadron to develop and create new knowledge for the enhancement of the DTIC repository and the R&D and S&T community. Work on the five-year contract will be primarily performed at Redstone Arsenal Government facilities and KBR offices in Huntsville, Alabama. |
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Cleared Employer at Work: Booz Allen
Interested in working with the data sets no one else can access? Join the team at Booz Allen—you’ll stay current and make a difference. Ready to bring your unique perspectives to solve diverse problems? Join us. The world can’t wait.
Opportunity to Watch
General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) was awarded the Customer Care Center (CCC) task order on the Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise (SITE) III contract. The task order, valued at $829 million over 10 years, was awarded in November by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Virginia Contracting Activity.
Under this task order, GDIT will provide a wide variety of remote and on-site IT services to support networks and domains at DIA locations globally. This will include modernizing workflows through automation and deploying the agency’s first customer experience (CX) team which will use data insights, advanced analytics and CX methodologies to continuously evolve services and efficiently resolve IT issues.
“As DIA implements its IT modernization strategy over the next decade, we look forward to partnering with the agency to enable users to save time, work faster and stay focused on their mission of providing intelligence to our military forces,” said Amy Gilliland, GDIT president.
