When we last wrote about Leidos, NorthStar 2030 had three broad themes. Since then, Leidos has firmed it up into five named growth pillars, and the last 12 months give us enough awards and partnerships to see which pillars are actually moving. Are you competing with Leidos in any of them?
The FedSavvy Strategies takeaway
- After our last blog, Leidos reframed NorthStar 2030 from three themes into five growth pillars: space and maritime, energy infrastructure, digital modernization and cyber, highly customized critical mission software, and managed health services. Those five are where Leidos says it will spend a disproportionate share of investment.
- The pillars advanced unevenly over the last 12 months. Digital modernization and critical mission software led with both wins and commercial-tech partnerships. Energy moved mainly through a $2.4 billion acquisition. Health moved through organic QTC contract volume. Space and maritime moved through partnerships and capability launches but no marquee award.
- Leidos’ two biggest recent awards, a $2.7 billion Army hypersonics production award and the $2.6 billion TSA screening-logistics contract, both sit outside the five pillars. The pillars tell you where Leidos is steering future growth, not where all of today’s revenue comes from.
- The through-line is commercial-tech partnering. OpenAI, RegScale, The Modern Data Company, and Havoc all show Leidos buying speed and AI-readiness rather than building everything in-house, the same play GDIT and Accenture Federal run.
What changed since our last blog: three themes became five pillars
Our March 2025 blog covered NorthStar 2030 as three focus areas: IT modernization, transformational warfighting, and increased privatization. At the Q1 2025 earnings call in May, CEO Tom Bell reframed the strategy around five growth pillars, and Leidos has used that structure consistently ever since. The shift matters for anyone tracking the company, because the five pillars are the language Leidos now uses in its own award announcements, and mapping to the old three themes will read as out of date. What follows is one representative win and one representative partnership per pillar from the trailing 12 months, with the gaps called out where they exist.
Editorial note: This blog explores some significant examples of contract wins, partnerships forged and perhaps some other honorable mentions. This is NOT intended to provide a detailed accounting of EVERYTHING Leidos has done. It’s a blog. It’s not a history course.
Digital modernization and cyber
Win: the Air Force awarded Leidos a roughly $455 million task order in December 2025 for Cloud One architecture and common shared services, a core cloud-modernization position.
Partnership: in February 2026 Leidos integrated its UpHold Armor solution with RegScale’s continuous controls monitoring platform to automate cyber compliance and continuous authorization to operate, first for the Air Force.
FedSavvy Take: this is a very active pillar. Leidos pairs modernization wins with commercial partners that automate manual work. If you meet Leidos in a cloud or cyber pursuit, expect an embedded compliance-automation story on both capability and price.
Highly customized critical mission software
Win: MACRO II, a five-year, $869 million Army award in April 2026 for AI-enabled, multi-domain decision-advantage systems. Leidos tied it directly to NorthStar 2030 mission software and decision advantage.
Partnership: in June 2026 Leidos embedded The Modern Data Company’s DataOS into its HeadWay Mission OS platform to unify fragmented federal data for AI without a rip-and-replace migration. Modern Data is an independent, venture-backed commercial startup, not a prime-owned or private-equity-held asset, which means it is a partner other primes could court just as easily.
FedSavvy Take: this pillar overlaps heavily with digital modernization, and MACRO II hits both in Leidos’ own words. The strategic intent is to move up the value chain from services into owned mission software and AI platforms, which supports a higher-margin, more differentiated bid.
Managed health services
Win: Leidos QTC Health Services continues to win under its Regions 1-4 IDIQ for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Disability Examinations with a ceiling at nearly $5 billion and $3.5 billion obligated thus far. This was an IDIQ picked up in January 2025, and it has accelerated with significant funding in FY2026.
Partnership: no marquee in-window partnership. This pillar is running on organic QTC contract volume and delivery-network scale rather than a headline commercial or technology tie-up. That absence is itself a signal: Leidos already owns the delivery engine here, so it has less need to partner in.
FedSavvy Take: QTC continues to give Leidos an entrenched, high-volume position in veteran and military health that is difficult to unseat, and it is the pillar most aligned with the old privatization theme. If you compete here, the contest is against scale and incumbency, not against a partner ecosystem.
Energy infrastructure
Win: this pillar advanced through acquisition rather than a contract award. Leidos acquired ENTRUST Solutions Group for roughly $2.4 billion, announced in January 2026 and completed in March 2026, roughly doubling its energy engineering business ahead of a supposed $1 trillion in U.S. utility modernization spend.
Partnership: no clean in-window partnership surfaced. The energy build-out is inorganic, driven by M&A and talent acquisition rather than a named technology partnership.
FedSavvy Take: the near-term competitive threat here is in commercial utility and grid engineering more than in a specific federal recompete, and it arrived by purchase rather than by win. Watch whether Leidos converts ENTRUST scale into federal energy awards over the next few quarters.
Space and maritime
Win: Leidos positions its latest NSA Technical Signals Intelligence (TechSIGINT) 2-year $335M award here as “NSA’s TechSIGINT mission delivers critical insights into foreign weapons systems and air and space capabilities, strengthening the nation’s ability to understand and respond to evolving global threats. Leidos will develop and deploy new systems using cloud architectures and standardized NSA corporate infrastructures and services and will provide the technical services to develop, deploy and sustain a wide range of enhanced TechSIGINT collection, production and analysis capabilities.”
On the maritime side, movement has come through capability launches like Sea Dart and Sea Archer and through partnerships, as Leidos continues to build out its place as an autonomous seagoing vessel designer. Worth keeping in perspective, though: Leidos has operated in autonomous maritime systems for years through operationally proven programs such as Sea Hunter and ownership of Gibbs and Cox, a mature naval architecture and engineering firm. Leidos is deepening a long-held position, not entering a cold start.
Partnership: in April 2026 Leidos and Havoc agreed to integrate collaborative autonomy software with the Leidos Autonomous Vessel Architecture, starting with the Sea Archer unmanned surface vessel, with a joint operational validation planned for Q4 2026.
FedSavvy Take: treat this as a pillar Leidos is building toward rather than dominating. The autonomy partnerships and vessel launches signal intent, but the absence of a marquee award in 12 months means position here may still be contestable. If maritime autonomy is your lane, verify Leidos’ actual program incumbency rather than assuming the pillar reflects wins. Regarding pushing their NSA SIGINT win as space is a stretch by any definition.
The awards that sit outside the five pillars
Worth isolating, because the framing is easy to misread. Three of Leidos’ largest and most strategically important recent awards are not named growth pillars:
- $2.7 billion Army hypersonics production award, moving from prototyping to production via Dynetics
- Low-cost containerized munitions work and company-funded AGM-190A missile development for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
- $2.6 billion TSA checkpoint logistics contract for screening-equipment sustainment extends a long legacy of security screening equipment courtesy in part of an acquisition from L3Harris back in 2020.
FedSavvy Take: Leidos still calls the defense ones NorthStar-aligned on the broad defense-and-national-security theme. The read for a competitor: these awards are consistent with a deliberate shift from being a systems integrator toward building its own products and technologies. Hypersonics production, munitions, and company-funded missile development are hardware and manufacturing plays, not services work, and they signal a Leidos that wants to own more of what it delivers. The five pillars show where the growth investment is formally pointed, but the product-and-technology ambition runs across the portfolio, inside the pillars and outside them.
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