Transcript for "$151B MDA SHIELD Winners: Your Next 30 Days": Alright. It's the top of the hour. It's 10AM over here in San Antonio, Texas and 11AM over there in DC Eastern Standard Time. So we're gonna get started today. My name is Britney Winkler. I'm the senior go to market manager at GovDash, and I'm here today with Brian Lindholm from FedSavvy Strategies. So today, we're gonna be talking all things ShieldGoldenDome, that $151,000,000,000 vehicle that is just paving the way for all DOD contractors this year and for the next ten years. So we're gonna get started here today. We're gonna be going through a presentation. This is the first one of a three part series, so make sure you're signing up for the other two that are gonna be happening in the next few months. And at the end, we're gonna save some time for some questions. So please put questions in the chat. We will make sure we get to all of those today. And we have Brian here to answer all of those, and we're gonna have a great discussion. So make sure you guys are staying active in the chat. We would love to hear from you today. And let's get started, Brian. Okay, without further ado, let's jump into it. Thanks, everyone, for showing up today. Really appreciate this. This is certainly arguably a hot topic as there was even the official post award conference for Shield to happen this week. So any of you Shield awardees, I'm sure, got the indoctrination there, and we'll be looking forward to opportunities here. But I'm going start off here. I think that one of the biggest things to be aware of is Shield is at is one of the pathways to Golden Dome. It is a big pathway, and I'm gonna say it upfront, I think Golden Dome as a whole, a program, is easily one of the largest defense contracting opportunities in the last twenty years. Which may seem like a very dramatic statement, but I think as you look at the facts around what Golden Dome is and what Shield means, as Brittany dropped in that, yeah, that casual $151,000,000,000 ceiling, holy smokes, that's just bonkers. So this will be exciting, and I'm gonna do my darndest to give you summary of some important things around Shield, around Gold Dome, and we'll do our darndest to address questions as we go through the end here. So without further ado, let's jump right in. So here's what we're gonna talk about today. So some near term things focusing on what to do next, what to expect from Golden Dome. I'm gonna give you a bit of a primer on things around the '20 26 NDAA, Golden Dome spending, customers, competitors, you should expect to see where multiple might be your partners, by the way, and some things that we even learned this week during the post award conference that I'll highlight a few snapshots there. Again, anyone who was at a Shield awardee already, you heard that firsthand, so I'll just give you sort of my interpretation for better, for worse. But, and then last but not least, what to do next. Right? So what do you need to be doing next depending on what your business is? I think the formula is more or less similar in terms of what to do next, but let's talk about that as well. So I'm always about operations and and being doing this for twenty five or so years, BD capture proposal. But for the most part, competitive intelligence work, it's all about action. Because right now, you're gonna have a a big contract people you need to monetize and find a path to to get a piece of Golden Gum, which will be substantial. So let's get into it. What what to expect? So just in this fiscal year alone, we're looking at about $24,000,000,000 of funding for Golden Gum. Just think about that. Dollars 4,000,000,000 in this fiscal year alone. Now, Shield IDIQ has obviously got a huge ceiling. It's a ten year contract, so it won't all be spent at once. But I think I wanted to highlight some things that are around this. I got questions too from some CEOs about, well, is this thing really gonna happen, and is this thing gonna have some longevity to it? Those are reasonable questions to ask because she anytime you invest in BD and anything, there's a cost. There's a cost in money, there's a cost in resources, and a cost in time and focus. So you wanna make sure it's something that is worthwhile investing in. And I think it's a very good question to be asking yourself. Is this worth me investing time and money and effort into? And you could ask that question yourself. Is this a fit for you? How much is worthwhile? But I've actually it's there are a lot of numbers floated around in terms of what's the golden dome thing gonna cost. When it's all said and done, it's fully operational, which by the way will not be done in the next couple years, not happening on any level at all, no matter what drugs you're on, there's no way that's happening. It will take time to get to a true, to match that vision. But there's a lot of estimates, and the highest one I saw was around $3,600,000,000,000 to realize all these capos, which that was actually done by the American Enterprise Institute. I have to give them a lot of credit. They and CIS CSIS have done some interesting analysis. It's some good bedtime reading if you're curious, but it's actually very useful. But it's also just something codified, right? This has been written into the NDAA. It's also been the initial defense strategy for The United States. It's been altered to factor this into it. And then you, of course, have an executive order that was specifically targeting this early last year. So you look at all these things. The funding is there. A contract vehicle is there that's supposed to service us. You have this being part of the national a lot of content in the National Defense Authorization Act that backs this up, not just funding, but also direction. So all these things, from a market analyst perspective, are good buying signals. It's not just a political fad. It's not a campaign promise. This is actually very real. And a lot of the things that are being developed already, this is there's a lot of things that already are in Golden Globe, will be in Golden Globe, that already exist. Just need to modernization. So all these tea leaves are being read, in my opinion, that line up that this actually is the real deal. Now, how much will really be spent, how much will really happen? If you know the answer to that with a high level precision, let's go to Las Vegas together and make some serious money because we don't know definitively, but I think everything looks positive. So I look at this as a good buy signal. So with that, let's deny it. So those of you who may be new to this and you saw a shield, looks like an easy one, let's get that vehicle. Very quick primer. This essentially is our take on Israel's Iron Dome. So if you've watched the news ever, I'm sure you've heard of the Iron Dome. It's been tested and it works. So it has defeated attacks from Iran, generally successfully, not perfectly, but generally successfully. So it's that concept of this overarching comprehensive, fully integrated strategic defense. That's what it is. Not just missiles. Because this is what this is geared toward is hypersonics, ballistics before they have some defenses against. They have cruise missiles and, of course, drones, which is a very real threat in terms of the we've seen in Ukraine how effective drones can be in warfare. And it's a little terrifying, but it's something we have to be cognizant and sober about as a country. So this is gonna build on things we already have. We already have kinetic weapons, aka missiles. We already have robust command and control. We already have a network of terrestrial and space based sensors to do this, but there's a lot that has to be developed to get to the vision. MDA is the lead, but I want to emphasize this now, and you're gonna get tired of me saying this. MDA is not the end all be all customer. They created Shield, that's true. They are the lead integrator on this, that is true. But there's a lot more to this that MDA will not touch and will not be doing, but they will be using with other DoD partners who will be a part of this. So let's be that aware. Okay. So Shield IDIQ, kind of a big deal, pretty easy to get on. I think this is not taking anything away from those of you who got on it, but let's be honest about it. The buried entry was incredibly low. So MDA was willing to engage non traditionals to give them a shot, and they want that to get some of the best and brightest technology and technical expertise out there, so they wanted to keep it open. There will also be a similarly low barrier to exit if you're not an active participant. And the portal that you would use to respond to SHIELD task orders, it will track your activity. So if you're not active, I think after the first year, don't submit a compliant proposal, you will find yourself out. So you need to be an active participant in this. I think I wanna briefly mention, just for bigger situational awareness, there's the Noble MAA, which is not the same as Shield. Shield is more execution, near term R and D, develop something that's gonna be real soon. Knowable is more, I'll call it mad science, where you've got some really wacky ideas to work through, some really interesting things to study. This is what you'll see. It's more focused on nontraditional contracting methods. So that may not be you. Maybe you do both, don't know. That depends on you. So in fact, if people wanna put in the chat if they're a Shield awardee or not, that'd be interesting to see who's actually here in terms of whether you're an active participant or you're looking at this as another opportunity for you. So pretty big crowd, 440 awardees, I think 20 or so companies did not make the cut. I'd be curious who those companies are, and I I would not want to be one of their business developers. They'd probably have to update their resumes. So pretty broad scope of work. If you can dream it, you can do it. And I I say that very in a very cheeky manner, but it's true. And this is important to understand. MDA is actively encouraging teammates or or rather shield awardees team. And I think the reality is you have to. Some of the tasks that will come out, there will be many that you simply cannot do yourself. So this is where you look at Shield as a, here is my starting pool of teammates. If they made the cut and they showed the interest, then this is where I need to do some research, and we'll talk about that a bit later on. One thing to emphasize actually, two things to emphasize here. This is not intended for advisory services. So if you're doing just general program management or other kind of consulting work, this is not the place for you. And the NDA reinforced that recently. So they're very clear. They have other vehicles that are purely advisory. And the size standard's a bit broad, so you can be a big small in this one. Now this will vary from task order to task order, but you could expect that the threshold for being a small is different than most. So speaking of which, let's get into expectations, right? I think you can safely assume this will be a catchall for Golden Gum as a vehicle to get to it. It will not be the only one, though. Right? It'll be it'll be a catchall because these other customers here that I've got on here that I know for a fact, and if you're unless you're new to this space, you'll probably be very aware of them, are prominent in the overall Golden Dome architecture. It's worthwhile noting that if you were there at the industry day, last year in Huntsville with myself and one of 4,000 of my best friends in the hockey arena, that all these different agencies were a part of that discussion for a reason. They weren't there for show, they were there because they have a stake in it. And they have a mission that's relevant to it. So Space Force, obviously, is a big deal here. We can't forget Army Space and Missile Defense Command, of course, MDA. And I wanna make sure also besides the advisory work will not be a focus of this, nor will more, I'll call, kind of quote unquote commercial IT type of work. So if you think that you're gonna sell, like basic help desk services or or software licenses via Shield, you will be sorely mistaken. That may be ancillary to a task order, but it is not the main event. So this is focused on mission capabilities, not commercial IT. So there's other vehicles that can do the same thing. That's not the purpose of shield. So just, be, I think, kind of yeah. Brittany, go ahead. Brian, I wanted to quickly ask. You know, you mentioned there's the 19 categories of technical scope areas. Where where do you where would you say the first initial task orders are most likely to land? I mean, you're speaking, about. security and AI and cloud. Interested to see what what's your take on that? Yeah, we're going to get into some of the bigger needs around Golden Dome. I think, though, what we've seen, and this actually will come out of, there were some not so subtle hints dropped by Congress on the NDA of what their immediate expectations are. It's a little bit of foreshadowing here. They clearly align that they want, they are expecting the NDA to produce a cybersecurity strategy. They are. curious about counter UAS. Specifically, when you see something mentioned specifically by name in the NDAA, it's like you need to pause and and go, why did they mention that specifically? That's, to me, that is indicative of interest. I think that we will expect to see a significant use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons in this. Because I'll tell you for that and this is actually again, this was something that was mentioned at industry forum, last year even, that there is no way on this planet this becomes reality without significant use of AI and autonomous weapons. Not possible. To have something at this scale that will be fully manned, that's not happening. And frankly, we probably our little human reptilian brains could not keep up with a real no kidding threat. If there was a real threat of drone swarms, hypersonics, ballistic missiles, advanced cruise missiles all at once, a real nationwide attack, our brains would melt down. We're gonna need a lot of the use of AI and other technology enhancements to even have a hope of defeating that. That seemed like a bit of a doomsday scenario, let's hope it never happens. But this Gen Xer who grew up with after school specialists like the day after of nuclear holocaust, so, ugh, it fell to therapy after that. So nothing like being a Gen X or grown up with that. But no, I think those are some examples of things that. I would expect to happen near term because this is going be helpful for MDA and others to baseline what do we need to be concerned about as now we have the money, we have the executive direction, and the money plus ups are significant. So they've got big buckets of money now. Now it's time to get down to work. Yeah. And we're gonna dig into that too even more. So I appreciate that question. It's important to think about what's next very early on. Okay. So what to expect. So my probably grossly oversimplistic view of how Shield is actually gonna work is it's gonna it when I I absorb what we're looking at, this is gonna operate a lot like a GSA schedule. It is very loose. MDA was very clear. They're gonna run a P and L to keep the contract in good working order, to do all the mods, all that jazz, but they will not dictate the competitions. Now, of course, MDAA, or I'm sorry, MDA will be a big user of Shield, but let me be clear, they will not be the only user of this. So keep that out of your brain. You need to think broader. That's why I'm not just mentioning things for academic purposes, I'm being pragmatic about it. Those are other agencies who have a very meaningful role in building different golden dome capabilities. But what the NDA has done is that they have created a vehicle where the agencies who are gonna order off of this can really call their own shots. They have flexibility to do what they think is appropriate to make an appropriate competition and to get what they want as opposed to having some arbitrary construct that's superimposed on them, which I think actually, I think is good. I think it's good because it gives the agency flexibility to do what they wanna do, to use their own judgment. But the flip side I put on my BD mind here is that if I'm doing business development and I'm looking at opportunities, if I have a vehicle that has a $151,000,000,000 ceiling and a very loosely defined how competition will be done, then I can shape that. Then I can go to that customer. I've got a I've got a I've got a solution to your problem. Let's use Shield. Let's go ahead and here are some things I would suggest you consider for evaluation criteria. Maybe we do some orals. Maybe we do a sue as opposed to a sal. And that allows you, as you bring this to market, when it finally manifests as a task order response to get into and you're scrambling to try to respond, well, those guys aren't scrambling. They've been ready for quite some time. And they've shaped it to fit an evaluation process that is beneficial to them. So that's, I think, we have to be thinking about it that way. It doesn't mean others can't win. It doesn't mean they won't just put things out that perhaps minimal attention on. But this is a good thing. So it's very much a wild, wild west in terms of what these caseloads will look like. No different than a schedule where it depends on the agency. They have delegated authority to do what they wanna do. So this is very important to make sure we do not forget this. And certainly, when you have a ceiling like this and you have existing requirements that will be recompeted or follow on, I would fully expect some legacy primes. So we're gonna talk about some legacy primes here. They will bring their work to Shield and simply shape what a Shield task rules like, oh, how about that? No one can compete realistically. Oh, what a shame. And then they win it again. We because we don't see that ever on any vehicle ever. I know that never happens. It's it's unheard of, but we should be thinking about that way. So it is a bit of a Wild West, that can be I'll borrow my inner little finger, chaos is a ladder, let's climb it and embrace that Game of Thrones attitude. So speaking of Wick, let's talk about the customers here. So I'm not talking about all of them. I want to highlight a couple of the ones with beaucoup dollars, the technical term there. So, really, you have Missile Defense Agency, of course, their lead, and also Space Force, specifically with Space Systems Command. For those of you who are old parts like me, you remember Space Missile Command from former Air Force, now Space Force, so tomato tomato here, and the Space Development agency, of which all three of these have been very active. So I wanted to highlight the budget picture. MDA got a 20% 27% increase over the last year because of gold and dump funding and other things. That's astounding. That's a gigantic increase in already a defense budget that's already very well funded compared to their federal civilian counterparts. But if any of these come from the federal civilian market, you know how that's going. So not pretty in a lot of cases, but this is extraordinary. And also Space Force who have, frankly, they've already had if you look at their their glide path of funding, it's increased exponentially every year as it was. As a maturing service, they're getting their legs underneath them. They've got a very clear mission. They've got a clear structure of how they're gonna operate. They also have, you know, 28% increase over last fiscal year alone. And if you think of the MDA, MDA actually, of their budget, they outsource a lot of it. They put a lot of that money on contracts. Space Force hasn't been quite as much, but I guarantee you that as I've taken a look at Space Force spending trends, it's getting I wouldn't say hockey stick territory, but it's closer to a hockey stick than it is flat. So the reason I highlight this is because if you look at this from a business perspective, you've got a good array of a good amount of funding for these agencies who have significant contracting capacities, authority, and they now have a vehicle to use to basically, if you can drain it, you can do it. So again, the buying to those in my mind are very positive. This is the kind of thing I look for as a market intelligence guy that goes, I'm excited. You know? So it's a good thing. So let's get a little bit more here. So this so, for gigantic nerds like myself, I'm not sure if, Britney, you suggested yourself to reading the NDAA. Did you you use that as insomnia cures or Yeah. I assume. you read the whole thing, and I it's a huge part of the recent report I just wrote. So, yeah, oh, totally into stuff. yeah. So it so take advantage of that that hard work that Britney did because people. like she and I are wired maybe a little bit differently. And this there's things you can pull out of it, though, in that exciting reading of the NDAA. There's some things specific to Golden Dome that I think we need to be very cognizant of. So the expectation, and there are several of these are dated requirements. So there's a, You will provide your information to us by this date. Congress is expecting some better sense of the overall systems architecture. I put an asterisk there because this has been a point of contention. From industry to MDA, help a brother out here. What's the thing it'll look like, guys? Now, they talked about a high level architecture at the industry day last year, which is very high level. But the expectation is Congress will learn more about that. Now I think we, in industry, we may be given mushroom treatment, kept in the dark and fed you know what, terms of what that architecture will look like. But we'll learn some of that over time, which will help them understand kind of your fit, right, where you fit in this. There's also some actual there's a cybersecurity roadmap that they're very specific about. That's something Brittany was quizzing on earlier. That's something that they will be asking in, I believe, in mid March, if I recall, that reporters do. They also focus on industrial base growth, which is consistent with the National Defense Strategy. In case if you read that too, you get more nerd stuff, but it's actually important read, that was one of the four pillars of the National Defense Strategy is to supercharge the industrial base. We see evidence of those contracts being pushed that are really just for industrial base growth. It may not have an immediate end use, but it helps the industrial base beef up to be able to handle something of this magnitude. This is nontrivial. Also, at modernization, right? So we're modernizing radar and sensor systems to make sure they can keep up with the newer threats. Because, frankly, a lot of this infrastructure, by the way, is this Cold War stuff. It's still there. Now these are impressive pieces of technology, but in order to keep up with newer threats, hypersonics, drones, etcetera, the older stuff, unless it's modernized, it will not keep up. And that's a problem. So you will see money to put on this, which is also, again, opportunities. Canada US was called down. Some other things that were very important that I think we need to be aware of, early things to be aware of, is specific concern of testing and violation. And, actually, I'm glad to see that. I really to see that kind of focus. Because if you want to move fast and get new technologies deployed quickly, the traditional defense test and evaluation process, which is extremely risk averse, has to change. We have to get better at testing and iterating through technologies to get them ready. So the fact that it'll be a focal point, and by the way, any of you in the audience here who have skills test and evaluation, and this is an opportunity for you that I think you might see earlier on to include, in case you're if you're new to this space, the Quadrilateral, aka the Reagan Test Site, that's where a lot of these systems may be tested Out there in a tiny little speck of rock in the Marshall Island Chain, the Pacific, of course, Guam. So there'll be infrastructure upgrades here. So this is all important stuff to make sure that we are cognizant of. So other things, just very briefly, the bigger thing is any of us who've been in a government contract for any period of time know that agencies typically have an allergic reaction to risk. They see risk, they smell risk, they curl up in a fetal position, and and they need to be comforted that the risk can be managed and go away. The reality is that the military is gonna have to accept a lot more risk. Really, it's gonna have to it's gonna have to embrace risk and be going up. This may not be pretty, this may not be perfect, but I need to get this deployed. I need to get this in the field to make sure it's actually gonna work correctly and and and get this implemented. We can't go to the ten year test and evaluation cycle. We can't do that anymore. So that will be a shift. A policy shift's already happened around that. I'll be curious if a cultural shift happens as well. But there'll be of course, there's already conflicting happening with avalanche satellites, space based networks, moving data from from space to ground. That'll be a very big deal. You've seen SBIRS that have been used for AI development. I mentioned earlier, that will be a big deal. I'm not joking. And and I gotta give credit. MDA Space Force have been very so we need AI. We need more of it. We need it now. We need more cowbell in the form of AI, we have it. So this will be a big deal. And frankly, in case I think you want to be aware of this, is that, I don't know about you've seen this, but I've seen a significant uptick in military space related MNAG. The private equity guys in our space, of which there are over 200 playing in this environment, see the money there, and they're making acquisitions that are significant to help companies get into a better position for something like this so they see that there are opportunities. So important stuff. So let's keep on going here. This is I'm not gonna read this to you. It's exciting reading it now. This is just a sample of things that I think get back to your question, Britney, about other things to look for. These are things that I think we should expect to see that will be prominent examples of needs. I mean, some of these are things that go boom, which unless you're a big aerospace defense contractor, you're probably not making missiles, probably not making weapons. But there's a lot of things that don't go boom that are essential to enable those things that go boom to be actually effective. So that's my typical term for weapons there, things that go boom. But the decision aids, cybersecurity, advances in material science would be critical. Supply chain security. We can't have half assed supply chain security and expect expect our things that go boom to actually work. We can't afford to have we need to have faster testing evaluation model simulation to help make sure we can test ideas. So there's a lot of things going on here. But I also wanna emphasize the interoperability of legacy technology and new because the legacy tech's not going away. It's not being deleted. We need it. It works. We need to build on it and make it modern. Alright. So I'm gonna do a very quick drive by here of kind of some of the who's who. So I briefly mentioned earlier that you need to be cognizant of who's in your space. And there are some companies who are ubiquitous across many of these agencies who have a stake or role in Golden Dome, but there's many that don't. And if you think about the common denominators here, what do we have? We have the big aerospace defense guys who make things go boom, make sensors. They do the heavy duty hardware. But there are, for every one of them, there's a 100 other ones who have unique engineering and technical expertise that help make that technology possible, to help integrate things together to work as a cohesive system, and that will be a big deal. There will be a lot of these other middle market companies who have unique expertise. So don't get obsessed over Lockheed Martin, for God's sake, okay? Lockheed Martin's got a big role. I'm not taking anything away from them, but they are a big piece of the puzzle. They're not the only piece of the puzzle. So think about company like Parts and Ventura Technologies. Significant engineering and technical expertise deep into MGA, knowing how it works and everything they've got works. You'll see others that may be less known like MTSI. We have significant roles in modeling simulation and cybersecurity. So be cognizant of it. This is where doing your homework is gonna be really, really important. So in Space Force, you see some of the same guys, but not all the same guys. So the reason I highlight this here is you figure out what your path is, the companies you want to team with and engage, whether you're a sub then or a teammate or they're your sub whatever whatever your your sub sub is, be aware of who's there. So a lot of the air again, aerospace, got the SAIC pop up, with a significant c two expertise and engineering expertise. Palantir, of course, we all think we unless you live under a rock, you know what Palantir is. They've been getting involved in the data infrastructure to enable that space to ground data to work correctly and processed. SMDC, again, you some same of guys, you see other ones too. So it will vary. As we wrap this part up, I wanted to point out we're all all I think we know now the term the neoprime. So just as Shield was open to any company who could demonstrate some level of competency of interest to MDA in this case, you're gonna see a lot of neoprimes, companies that go to market very differently. Your traditional defense contractor does not go to market with, I have a product, I have something I'm specifically gonna make for you, and then I'm going to sell that to you and maybe modify it a bit. It's the other way around. I've got stuff I can do. What do you need? Then, well, you write the specs. I'll go ahead and build it, whatever that may be. The neoprime is a very different animal, and they have, in some cases, some fundamental advantages. A much higher risk tolerance, if we're honest about ourselves. We've been in the defense market for a long time. We also have a low risk tolerance, but they are ready to go. So if you think about the, again, the kind of I'm getting into like the FAR rewrite and how DOW is operating, is they want to embrace commercially available technologies that are ready to go now, or at least really, really quick. These companies, as they are embraced as nontraditional, may have a significant competitive advantage depending on the specific need or what they're trying to solve. So just be mindful about that. Okay. So getting down to some brass tacks. What the hell do you do next? Right? So this is where I gave you a very rapid fire primer of the opportunity and a broad sense, who is who in the zoo on the prime side, on the customer side, how Shield might look like it's gonna work, etcetera, etcetera. Now I get down to the the more classic business development and growth and strategy of, okay, I've got this vehicle. Super. Uber nerd Brian has has has blasted me with a a a very high level array of facts. Great. Now what do I do? I think what you really needed to think about here is whatever your company is, how small or big you are, what do you do that will address a golden dome need or two or three or four? Right? This is where you have to be really, I think, very mindful about your opportunities, also your limitations. If you've got some just generic commercial IT work, I hate to break it to you, but that probably won't matter. If you've got something that's gonna fit into these different needs that I've hit on, then that's the the string on the sweater you want to pull to start to unravel where do I fit. And then to figure out, okay, what part of these different stakeholders is the best fit for me? Is it NDA? Is it STA? Is it SSC? Is it more than one of the above? This is where to think through where he focuses, if you try to blast across all these guys, I hope you get a lot of BD money because that's what it's gonna cost you to do the shotgun blast of spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. I would not advise that. But you have to use that to start with to figure out who you go. And frankly, don't be shy about teaming. Making a friend is a good thing. We all heard the team that sort of the term it competimates, frenemies, however you wanna label them, to be aware of kind of who's who in the zoo in terms of those agencies where you might have something that as you understand your offering, how it matches these problems, how it might match existing legacy contracts that might be a good fit and will likely continue on, those are the team teammates you may want to cozy up to. Maybe you're not ready for live TV. Maybe you're, well, I got Shield, but I'm kind of nichey in my space. I'm better to to team with SAC or Torch Technologies or Parsons. They're the ones who I can add something to them that I think that they don't have, that I can do better. That might be an interesting discussion, but you've got to have that discussion. And then frankly, engage, right? I have to give credit to MDA especially. I'm sometimes a little bit disappointed with how different agencies are willing to engage and are open minded. I think that we see MDA and others who are, in fact, being more open minded and being more open to engaging industry. This is a good sign, but it's gotta get down to brass tacks and get down to some real classic beauty guys. And this is something that I think you should be thinking through. Maybe you've already done that. I talk to a lot of shield awardees of which are kinda waiting and seeing. I am not a passive person by any sort of imagination. So I think this is the point. If you've not started to really crap this strategy, you need to get to work, like, right now. I'm dead serious about that because guess what? We're in February 2026. We got seven months or so left of the fiscal year for $24,000,000,000 that we spent. Just think about that for a moment. So with that in mind and thinking about talking about execution, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually shut up for a minute here, and and Brittany is gonna talk to you about how GovDash could be a part of that. Because when it gets down to it and you got the task order flying, you gotta have an engine that can actually help you get there. So I think GovDash could be a useful tool for you. So speaking of which, Brittany, Yeah. I'm a be quiet, Thank you. and and it's all you. Yeah. Thank you, Brian. Excited to talk a little bit about GovDash. I don't want this to be a sales pitch at all, but I think it's super relevant to mention that over half of GovDash customers today have won an initial seat on the MDA shield. So for the next ten years, you know, that's so much opportunity here. Brian mentioned in the trillions. So, yeah, just going through GovDash, you know, we are and I know most of you guys here today are current customers, so that's awesome to see. And, you know, GovDash is the AI platform built to win and run the whole life cycle of a government contract. And specifically for Shield, you know, again, over half of our customers have used GovDash to win a seat on Shield in some capacity, And they're gonna be using it to win, you know, work on the future task orders that are already coming down the pipeline as we speak. So it's important to know, you know, GovDash provides mission grade accuracy across all of the 19 Shield technical scope areas that Brian just detailed. And our AI is really deterministic. It treats the NDA's evaluation criteria as absolute rules. We follow all of the compliances. You know, we have opportunities for you to put your data in here that is very secure, especially when you're working with the DOD. Everything has to follow a lot of compliance rules, and we match all of those. So if you wanna go to the next slide, Brian. Yeah. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. And then so, you know, how the big question is, like, how are you gonna outpace, you know, 2,400 of your competitors when task orders actually drop this year? You need to really just stop scrambling and start using a unified platform like GovDash, that is, you know, entirely unified. It's a system of record. It includes, you know, not only capture, bid match, shredding, teaming hubs. And teaming is so important when you look at Shield, but we have so many opportunities and tools within the platform. So it is really an all encompassing tool, unified. Everything you need is in one place. And I think it's been really proven that it does work if, you know, over half of our customers have won some aspect of Shield so far. And then the last slide, Brian, just, you know, really quickly, it's important to note that winning is just step one, especially when it comes to Shield. You know, I've seen a lot of relation to a GSA contract vehicle. You know, there's an opportunity for everyone out there, but delivering on, you know, what you're providing services with for the next ten years is so important. Just because you have a seat on it right now doesn't mean you're gonna be staying in the game for the whole timeline of, you know, the shield contract vehicle. So, you know, GovDash tracks partner work share. It calculates contract value automatically. We just came out with a new pricer tool, so you are able to really manage everything all at once. We integrate with Word, SharePoint, Salesforce. And, you know, we have an amazing team of staff here that really make it a no learning curve, and it's very an intuitive platform. And, you know, most importantly, we protect you at the base of everything that you're doing here. We carry capture intelligence directly into the delivery, the whole life cycle of a contract. So before you even, write a proposal, respond to something, all the way until after, you know, what you're doing when you actually win something, you know, and looking at past performance and how you're gonna compete on the next opportunity. So all that to say, you know, I know, Shield is such a huge vehicle in the DOD space. But, you know, if you're interested in using GovDash to get there, and use it in the future, come find us after. We would love to give you a personalized tactical demo and kind of learn more about your company, your goals, and how we can help you out. So thank you, Brian. No, my pleasure. I think there's some important points, especially considering how fast and loose these shield tasks are going to be and to to make sure you keep yourself accountable on the valuation criteria. I know in the competitive intelligent work I do, especially at Black Hat, we get into that with the competition. And I'd say the number of times I've gotta push back on someone is that is that win thing or solution feature, is that evaluatable? Well, who cares? It's irrelevant. And and and when you have that kind of loose fast and loose task, what do we expect, to have something that can adapt to it and keep you honest and keep you on track is always critical. The number of times I've seen protests where someone must have hallucinated and didn't bother to pay attention to the evaluation criteria is astounding. So that and keeping teams, I guarantee you all that you will have extensive teaming on shield task orders. Mhmm. I'll I'll bet on that. Right? You wanna make a bet with me? Let's make a bet offline. Guarantee, there'll be shield task orders will involve a lot of teaming, especially on the bigger complex requirements where you're gonna have no choice. If you're a boutique company and the money company is on shield or boutique companies, that's not a bad thing, by the way, you focus on what you do, you will have to have some complex teaming. So to have a tool that can help you keep keep that on track and keep that managed well, man, that's gonna be critical. Especially, I guarantee you, these tasks will will not have slow responses. I'm willing to bet you. It'll be you got two weeks. You got three weeks, and you're gonna be then having a lot of caffeine flowing your veins to keep yourself going for that time. So I appreciate that, Bernie. Thanks for thanks for the GovDash primer. It's very much appreciated. Yeah. So I know we're getting some q and a here, but I wanted to just wrap up a few things here. So it's awarded, so shield is is all settled down. Actually, NDA put a lot of effort to get a to even have the amount of awards that they produce in that short period of time is actually astounding to me. Like, how? This is mind blowing. But it's there, it's established, and then they're ready to get going. And they have to. They are behind the eight ball, and they know this. It's not disparaging MDA or anything else. The reality is they've had to get all of infrastructure in place to build a really engaged industry at large. The fact that this is a broad, broad, defined IDIQ, if you can dream it, you can do it. That's really the way I look at this, a very simplistic way, but the scope is so broad with 19 task areas that you look at it, it's the kitchen sink that they put in there. You need to be thinking about how do I create opportunities. This is why doing the homework is gonna be critical to start pushing up. And it doesn't mean you can't respond, doesn't mean you can't take advantage of something that pops into your queue and and give the old college try. I think you have to be honest about yourself that your peak win's gonna be probably pretty low. Doesn't mean you can't pull off a Christmas miracle. I've been part of teams where we pulled off Christmas miracles for a $100,000,000 bids that came out of nowhere. Let's give it a shot. We won that? Holy cow. How'd that happen? Now we gotta perform. Uh-oh. So you might they might do that, but it's gonna be tough. And I think the fact that it's so broad and you can probably have a good chance to shape it, that's a good thing. I like that. That gets me excited from a business development and business growth perspective. If I can chart my own adventure, I get excited about that. If it's constricted to a very narrow lane, I'm not so interested anymore. But I think that's key. And the one thing I gotta say, start your planning now. I've actually my company, we are not strangers to the military space at all. We've been involved in in several billion dollars of prime contract wins in the military space domain. So it's something we are very familiar with. I've actually even teamed up with another company, Peerless Group, Jennifer Nambar, a friend of mine who has extraordinary capture expertise, and our two companies have a lot of complementary expertise to help you figure out your path more clearly so you don't waste a lot of time in BD and BNP trying to figure out where the hell am I gonna go. With 24,000,000,000 that's been appropriated for this fiscal year, I don't think the time is on your side. So don't be reactionary. You can definitely get out of the gate quickly, get a jump on the other 2,400 companies here, to have a hopefully competitive edge. So a lot of wins there we can capitalize on and use that expertise to help you. So with that, I think we'll wrap up. So if you want to reach out to me, if you want to ask about GovDash, Brittany and and the the GovDash team, I'm sure will be happy to talk with you. And if you wanna talk about strategy with us on Shield specifically, there's my information. Just please no offers for, like, extended car warranties or loans or anything like that. I get enough of those all day long. So I think we'll try to address some questions here. I see let's see. I'm not sure if there's anything we wanna go in order here, but let's see. I see. I'll just jump in there. So I see a question from Al Vega around the scale and complexity around this. Require non traditional leadership. Are seeing industry making moves or shifting their leadership to align? Interesting question. Multifaceted question here. I think the leadership aspect, that's kind of a broad one in terms of nontraditional leadership. I think that mindset for a lot of companies who are playing in this space is that the business as usual mindset of we'll take our time, we'll go through a laborious, long proposal response isn't gonna work. And also, want to take risk. So if you think about the environment this is gonna operate in, there is a higher level of risk both for the government and industry. So you have to accept it won't be perfect, and there may be some some some risk in there. But the one who is gonna embrace carpe diem, seed of the day, and who's willing to take some risks to get their foothold into Golden Dome, I think you're gonna find yourself at a better spot. There's not not without risk. But if your customer is putting their foot on the gas hard and you're not putting your foot on the gas to keep up with them, to be willing to take risk with them, then I think you're gonna be at a disadvantage. So this may require also a more flexible proposal response and solution development. If we're typically in the mindset of I have a very prescribed SOW or PWS to respond to that's scripted out with here's how to suck an egg and 5¢ or less, And they go, hey, I've got an objective. You're a smart guy. You figure it out. Embrace that. Now I think that'll separate out the heroes and the zeros, because with a a broader defined RFP to respond to, it might be trickier. But that's the thing I would encourage people to think about in terms of the company leadership is going to embrace those maybe more amorphous kind of vaguer responses and and and learn from them to strut your stuff, but also to be flexible in terms of how you do your solution. I don't think you're gonna see prescribed typical staff augmentation stuff. They're not looking for that. They look for loose solutions. So we change the mindset. That's how I would interpret that. I'm not sure if Britta gave any other interpretations that allows for a multifaceted question here or not. Yeah. No. I mean, I I completely agree with you. I think that's why it's so important to not only, you know, read long winded forms of content like the NDAA, but, you know, really truly understanding what an agency's mission is. You know, you you explicitly mentioned, like, the four mission areas that they were very open and transparent about hitting this year. I think that's. why it's so important to read documents like that. 100%. Yeah. So let's see. Have CBR has been reauthorized? To my knowledge, no. I don't know if, Britney, if you've seen them. I think that they've not been reauthorized yet. Don't I don't. recall. I've not seen news. on that recent. Which is unfortunate. Another one here is, do you know if MDA is posting task orders? So so they've got their own portal, and the name escapes me. So you if you're a Shield awardee, you're on the portal, you got your your in brief this week, and you'll have to go there and pull those task order responses. They're gonna push all other content through that. So you might see things that are hinted on sam.gov, but I don't think you can count on that. So similar to GSA schedules or other GSA vehicles, you go into eBuy, you get a log in and and see what your stuff is. I think I think GovDash, you guys may pull it into an environment, someone to look at in one place. Yes. I'm not sure if you guys are looking integrating with MDA's platform for Shield or not, and that may be on the road map. I don't recall. Yes. Yeah. We are. We're we're pulling opportunities from many different places. And if you wanna learn more about, you know, exactly where we're pulling opportunities, I'm happy to sit down with anyone that wants to know a little bit more about it. Okay. Yes. So I I think and, yeah, it'll be posted. It'll be the same with another vehicle. You'll things that will be posted. But if I'm going to embrace my, my growth mode, I I emphasize that for you to consider driving work to this. I really believe that because this goes back to if you, you know, define your niche, who you're gonna serve, what of these specific Golden Dome needs you can try to help address to make this Golden Dome concept a reality, and then they go to those agencies as the as they may maybe you gain traction in terms of what you can do for them, then I'd say push the damn concept as a contract opportunity to a shield. I don't know why you wouldn't. It'd be no to me, that's no different than any other vehicle. The vehicle is offering a license to sell. I think the shield, broadly defined as it is, is no different. So I would look at it that way. Let's see. Okay. There's a question. Why would an OEM consider submitting a prime response? This seems well, you'll see a lot of the OEMs are on Shield, for one. If you look at the list, you can see if you go through 2,400 of your best friends, they are on there. Yes. There's a lot of services on here, but there's also capability development that's gonna happen on Shield. So I think, actually, if I was an OEM not to be on this, I think that would be utterly foolish, to be honest with you. And I don't think this is looking for staff augmentation. It's looking for a solution development. The way this has been built to be focused on solutions as opposed to, I want a butt. I have a seat. Put that butt in that seat and do my bidding minion. That's not really the the intention, I think. It may evolve into that in some cases, but I I don't know that'll be the case. So I I think that if you want to play in this and leverage a scope of work that if you can dream it, you can do it, with $151,000,000,000 ceiling, to me, it'd be a matter of why would I not go on that? I mean, honestly, to me, it's a pretty straightforward case to do it. And the OEM saw the merit. If you look at that list, you'll see all of the aerospace guys on shield, every one of them. Let's see. I think, yes, I think you addressed that question, Britney, about the portal thank you, Laurie, is Orbit. I had a brain fart and couldn't remember what the hell the name of the NDA's portal was. So they'll be pushing all their things onto Orbit. I think so, Sam, into that. Not at the moment, but I think that's in the probably the development pipeline for you. Let's see. Let's see. Any other questions? I'm looking at it. I don't think there are any questions I see. If there are any questions people got, we're happy to address those or wrap up here. Brittany, the only thing you just wanted to add here I'm forgetting about? I'm keeping you honest about the needy adulthood provision. Yeah. No. I think we got to every question out here. And, you know, if you have more questions after this, feel free to connect with your either me or Brian. Happy to, you know, make some time to answer more of these types of questions. And just also a reminder, we're having two more shield focused webinars coming up in the next few months. So if you enjoyed this content, you know, please sign up for the next two because we're just gonna continue to have speakers on that are experts in, you know, Shield and all things MDA and DOD. So please join us, you know, on future things. Great. Well, appreciate this opportunity to have a chance to chat with you all very much. So if you've got questions, want to thank GovDash for putting over one to collaborate with me on this one. I definitely appreciate the opportunity here. So very much appreciate that. Oh, sorry. There's a lot of questions I may have missed here. My apologies. NDA is a current customer. Okay? The best method to use this forum is a group of folks. I I don't know about this as a forum, perhaps, but the the list of all awardees for Shield is pretty public in three tranches. So I would use that to start with and reach out to those folks. I don't know there's a specific form for Shield awardees that may be a support group at some point, as people commiserate over Shield. But, I think definitely engage those guys as part of, I think, an overall strategy of how you would go ahead and team up with companies. And then SBSA, assume set aside orders, that's kind of a broad question in terms of approaching small business set aside award. I think one thing we have to be cognizant of is that the tone with contracting going forward is not going to be quite so focused on the set of size. Let's be honest about that. We have to have a very honest, super conversation about those. There is nothing specific on MDA shield that will influence this. That will be a decision made by the agency. If they want to compete as a set aside, we're full and open. That's their call. MDA is gonna take a very hands off approach on that one. So I think I would segue that into, as you try to influence opportunities, I would encourage those agencies to consider a set aside. Now remember, the default NAICS code is an R and D NAICS code with a thousand person employee threshold whether you're a small or not. So a small could be pretty damn big when you've got a under a thousand maybe just under a thousand employees. So, yeah, folks, I I that to me is more of a shaping question than something that will be structurally built into Shield. All right, sorry, I noticed those questions there. I wanted to make sure we didn't miss those. Yeah. Okay. I'll be quiet for once. So again, I wanted to say, Brittney, thank you. Thank you. Sam Dentry is providing the adult supervision behind the scenes for both of us. I need a lot of that. Appreciate you working with us. Thanks again to all of you for being patient and listening in. If you've questions afterwards, you know how to reach us both. So thank you very much for the time. Awesome. Thank you, everyone.