2025 Year in Review: What Changed GovCon and What Comes Next

Hey everybody, welcome to the future of Govcom. This is a weekly podcast to bring together experts from across the industry and look at what's happening today and how it's going to impact the future of our industry. I'm Jake Fraser. I'm the owner and CEO of Precision Talent Solutions. You know, in leading one of the industry's top executive search firms, I get to talk to influencers every day. Sea suite executives, board members, growth leaders, top government officials, military flag officers. And on this podcast, what we're doing is we're bringing in these experts from AI, from space, from medical, from logistics, from engineering. And we're sitting down and talking about what's happening in their specific area of the industry and how will impact the future. So pour a cup of coffee and let's get started. Hey everyone, it's Jake from PTS. Welcome back for another. This is a bonus episode of the future of Govcom podcast. Today, what we're going to do is quickly, we're going to take too much of your time. We're going to take you through our hot off the presses year in review for 2025. I think most of you know that we put out a quarterly report every quarter, talk about what happened during that quarter. And this report, what we're going to do is kind of summarize the whole year, hit the real high level pieces and also interpret a little bit about what we can see happening into 2026. And this is based on this reports based on publicly available information, human intelligence, things we hear every day we're talking to top leaders across the industry and we pick up little pieces and we try and put it all together here for you to make it easy for you to make sense of what happened in 2025. And so if you get this, you can get a copy of the report, share it with your team. This is kind of like the cliff notes, which I love. Okay, well, let's get started. So first off, 2025, wow, I don't think we've had a year like this. We certainly haven't had as transformational of a year like this since 9/11 since 2001. Massive transformations as Kevin Plexico said on one of our podcast about faces on many policies from previous administrations coming from this administration, complete changes and directions. Normally, there's little pivots in this year. I think there were massive changes that are going to have a far reaching impact on our industry. Let me just summarize it this way. I say Q1, I'm talking about calendar Q1 was shocking all. The new administration came in, Doge was unleashed. And I think everybody was just astounded. Though this is exactly what the administration said it was going to do. I think Q1 was shocking all Q2. I think that the dust started to settle. Settle, we started to see what's left, what's going on. And the administration began to articulate its priorities. I think Q3, after the summer, we began to see the cooling of the non-prioritized areas and the absolute focus on defense, on homeland security, on cyber, on the far overhaul. Those clearly became the areas of focus for the administration. And then Q4, I think we're all expecting things to get moving, but the government shut down hampered that. And so it was a really crazy year. But we're going to talk about major forces impact in the industry, major programs. We're going to look at the defense, the European defense market, M&A, and give you an update of things we're doing here at PTS. Despite what happened in 2025, I will say PTS, we tried to adapt to this situation. A lot of you know, we've been providing pro bono support to military for years. And this year we scooped up a lot of the transitioning SESs. We built a product line called precision experts where we brought in almost 100 recently transitioned SESs from across the government, as well as recently transitioned senior military, put them into our platform or offering to our customers for fractional subject matter expert engagements advisory board consulting roles. I'll just pop up here our catalog for experts. You know, you can see across the board three star generals, core commanders across the board NATO with income commander, Air Force, even European defense folks coming in into our experts realm. Also very senior civil servants that have recently transitioned to Armstrong was just on our podcast comes out of DHS. Mike Darios was a senior procurement executive at a state department as Steve ran the Arctic desk at DOD on and on. We got recently retired Coast Guard and it goes on across the board for a pretty deep catalog across Gough tech. I just did a podcast recording which Ocoff yesterday. So these these experts are available to our customers for consulting and advisory type roles. So reach out if you're interested in learning more. We did that in 2025 which I thought was probably the only year in the history of government contracting. You could get all those people in one place. Major things shaping the industry. Let's talk about first of all the Pentagon has been making a big move. Acting priorities. Of course, renaming to the Department of War. This is an interesting concept where Gough tech used to be kind of a support function. Now it is a core delivery and I think it's a big theme. There's been a focus on realignment. Check out this article. It's a really good one in the Washington Post that outlines some of the different scenarios. The Pentagon is looking for to consolidate some of the co-coms. So we're setting the we're setting the the stage for a major kind of posture shift within the Department of War. Other things drive in the industry. DHS, you know, kind of with the Homeland Security focus has been a big focus. It gives a really good drill in of where's the funding going within DHS within the sub agencies. It's a good read. This is a major force and a lot of new talent needs to go penetrate these sub agencies with a DHS. And we've been very busy there this year. Of course, Europe is having to stand up. We got a great couple of really good podcasts Andy Rowling who is a retired three star recently out of Brussels. Andy's a great guy and has a podcast. We find it here for you. Check it out where he talks specifically about where he sees NATO in the next three years. It's a great podcast. Listen to Andy is a wealth of knowledge. Also one of our precision experts. We can look at the this all has an impact on the workforce that we're seeing. While there are a lot of federal employees hitting the market, there's some new emerging niche needs around the government contracting space, particularly around defense, around Homeland Security, around these new priorities. And that's where we've been focused on. So lots of focus on speed and contracting and the government's been the new ministerations been talking a lot about that and then manufacturing is a big winner in 2025. Let's talk about GovTech in 2025. There's been a lot of movement here. First of all, back in November's CMMC became part of became law and it's going to be part of requirement in all solicitations. If you don't know about this, make sure you're tracking it. We have a partner company we work with that can help you get CMMC. We also have some experts that can help you navigate that process. Lots of streamlining. You can see on the R&E, basically, what are the priorities in the government? They did a restructuring. They went from these 14 critical technologies down into six. So it's easier for the for the kind of the priorities to be managed. So you can check that out. New pathways for engagement and kind of a consolidation is some of these main contracting tools. If you want to know more about what we can do, Candace and Isaac are very knowledgeable about the entire GovTech space. Back to the army, mild home turf. Lots been going on. The army is getting a little bit less funding than in the past. There's a memo that came out from the Department of War, kind of resetting priorities away from traditional land systems. We have one of our experts, General Omar Jones. If you check out this blog post, it's on our website where he talks about MCOM and the future of military installations. It's a really good read talking about the future of installation management command. Logcap is getting ready to hit a new phase. We're starting to talk about logcap six. There's already been an industry day. There's going to be another. There's talk about moving this to a two-single award, two-say talks that would consolidate logcap, APS and EGLE. So this is going to be a new look at logcap on logcap six based on what they're talking. And then logcap five has been just kind of steady during 2025. It's been used for a couple of special programs, but certainly not hitting its spend. There's some charts. You can see who's winning the race KBR and B2X picking up most of the work. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Mentum down in Southcom given all that's going on there. Yeah, other major programs, soft class. The Bids already been output in. We actually helped a big company on that one. That'll be, that's a new substantial $10 billion program. We expect to be awarded this year. Some other notable awards. We do have a lot of experts in the Army field. Navy is getting more of the funding. As you can see, move to a new battleship program that Golden Fleet has been announced. I'm just going to drive kind of a change on the manufacturing side. Those long-term programs. NAFAC has been busy. I think a big mover in the industry if you're not watching it is WexMAC. WexMAC has been cannibalizing or taking business away from logcap and they keep opening it up and excited. extending it, adding more capacity. There's 2.0, they just put out 2.2 at the end of the year to add more bonus capability. So keep an eye on Wexmac. We're doing a lot of support for that. A lot of the boss contracts have gone into various stages of award and solicitation. We're waiting on Diego to pop out right now. You can see there's a KBR one, the Djibouti. Got it back, or they were the incumbent, they were the original one, they lost it now. Back on it, that's good. So a lot's going on the Navy boss award area. We got a lot of past performance around these types of programs. I'm not saying we know all the CECs out there, but we can know a lot of them really good in this space. So you can see other notable and substantial contract awards across the Navy programs. Talking Air Force, who's getting more and more budget and support some of the traditional contingency contracts we've been supporting, just like log cap, they're on the same cycle. F cap five is hitting the evening, and F cap six is going through this solicitation process. That's a tricky little program requires a lot of cleared. A lot of times former Air Force folks were really good in that space. Also some big check out this AMAC program if you're on the technology side. This is a big IDIQ, $10 billion IDIQ that should be on your radar. OK, dealing into space, this is an emerging area. I think the biggest thing that happened this year is the announcement of moving space command to Huntsville, Alabama from Colorado Springs. That's going to have a major talent impact. And that's something we're tracking. We have mapped as-- he said we've mapped the Huntsville market. Another big thing is the SHIELD program, which supports Golden Dome. If you're not tracking this, if you're not on this contracting vehicle, you can see there's 2,100 firms that now are on. There's been a couple releases on the SHIELD program. That's going to support the Golden Dome. That Golden Dome is going to move out. So as those-- and you remember, whoever starts winning the first task orders on that program are likely to dominate the program. It's going to have key personnel needs at something else we do. We got a space expert on our team with Isaac. So we're ready to support in this area. So keep an eye on this space, pardon the pun. All right. Yeah, more notable awards in the space sector. DHS, this is the new darling of the administration. The Homeland Security is getting a lot of work. We looked at where the funding's going around the ice and the CBP. They're tapping into other acquisition vehicles. It's interesting they use WECSMAC for one of the biggest $1.3 billion program went to this company, acquisition logistics, which is also a team, I think, with a momentum in Akhama. There's a lot of money flowing down here to the border. We got a lot of good leads on talent. Very, very senior former SES type talent that know this space. DHS is more relevant than ever. State Department has been going through a massive transformation under this administration. They reorganized. They've absorbed what's left of USAID, about 15%. So you think State Department's restructuring, they're not going to get the funding, but they're actually growing because they're absorbing a lot of the Michigan USAID. And they're going to go from about 10 billion in spend up to about 14, 15 billion in spend. So make sure you're tracking with State Department foreign assistance. The food, the health is moving into State Department from USAID. There's a great podcast with Mike Darius. Mike was the chief procurement officer over in State Department. Check that out. It's on our website. He has a really good lay down. What's going on with dips, with global cap, with the integration of USAID, new acquisition strategies over State Department, which he helped set up. There you can see us. Since it's been published, we actually have some activity. The first task orders came out on global cap. God is still in protest, global advisory center evaluation. ELA, this is my old home turf. Now, they're always trying to transform. Frankly, it takes them a little bit of time to do that. But they set up a new subordinate command for weapons, which could be interesting. If you're in the weapons business, this is a new agency or sub agency, DLA. You got to be working with. Then across the board, the old prime vendor programs, which I like to track. You can see lots of acquisition activity. Swahia is going through the RFP just came out before Christmas. DLA loves doing that. You can see that SPV, basically the Middle East Kij, or whatever you want to call it. That's under evaluation. And then down on the MRO side, you can see that there are RFIs and their proposals in and some notable awards on the DLA side. Looking at GSA, GSA is also kind of the winner. It's becoming the executive agent for all IT procurements. So if you're not comfortable or fluent in dealing with GSA, we have some folks that really know that agency that can help you penetrate from our experts pool or from also from our BD pool. They do their acquisitions differently than traditional DOD. So that's worth looking at. European defense, I think implied by a lot of what's going on with this new administration, pushing the European NATO partners to invest in defense. The big thing is going up to 5%. This is monumental. This is going to cause substantial amount of investment from the European defense base, which means the industrial base, which means they're going to need talent. They're going to need partners. Over half our team is based over here in Europe. I am, if you're interested in this space, we know a lot about this area. Obviously, Ukraine, Jake's call is. It may not be the way we like it, but Ukraine, something's going to happen with Ukraine this year. There's a lot of opportunities there. A lot of companies have been positioning. We know a lot of the companies. We are supporting on the ground there with senior and technical talent. UK stepping up. Overall, NSPA is going to continue to get busier. If you look at their trend charts, their spend under management is doubling over the course of the last three years. NSPA and NCIA will be more relevant from a procurement perspective as NATO looks to consolidate procurements. It's a fickle little agencies to deal with. We know a lot about it. We have an expert on our team, Baws, that knows exactly how to navigate it. He's based there close to the headquarters. There's also a good podcast. NATO did this industry forum in Bucharest back in November. Check out Lieutenant General Lance Landrum, who was there and gives a readout for our audience on the podcast. Lots going on on the NATO side. Watch this space in this area we can help you out. M&A, it slowed down a little bit in 25 from 24, which is understandable given the lack of certainty. I think this is going to pick up in 26. This is the trend chart by quarter. So this is 24 going into 25. So just a little bit of a drop off in 25, but I think we'll see that pick up in 26. Now there's some more certainty. Some example of the new, noteworthy transactions that we've been tracking. And then last but not least, FMS, given what's going on the world, the idea of buying from America to give to Ukraine, a lot of these countries wanting to have military independence and sovereignty will be using more FMS. I think that it's going to be an area of growth. There was an executive order. You can see here talking about the overhaul of the FMS program, basically to streamline it, to speed it up because it's typically been seen as too slow. So a lot going on in the FMS realm, you can see across Indo-Paycom, Europe, and the Middle East expect to see more of that. Last but not least, with PTSD, I'm so proud of the team. We faced a tough market in GRU in 2025. We built a new product line with precision experts that I showed you. We have enhanced our offerings around career concierge, which has been more relevant than ever, helping people, vigils make career transitions for a nominal fee. And we're also working with companies that are doing right-sizing and reorganizations. We're helping departing employees pivot through our career transition services. That's been great. Look, we were out in the market a lot this year, I'm racked up some miles, but you can see us in action from doing matchmaking events. This is on the backs of launching the precision experts, lunchens, happy hours, M&A conferences, CA work, we're out there in the market every day, meeting with CANN and it's a meeting with customers. It's been an exciting year for PTSD in 2025. I'm super excited about precision experts. And I think we're well positioned for 2026, where I expect some headwinds or tailwinds, I guess tailwinds to come behind us. Again, check out that podcast with Kevin Plexico, he gives a pretty good laydown of what to expect in 26, 27, and even 28. It seems like we're gonna have a better trend line than we did in 25. Look, it's a busy industry. There's a lot going on and at the end of the day, success relies on having great people. And for PTSD, our focus is not just being a recruiting company, but being at the heart of the industry, knowing what's going on, helping our customers with insights, helping our candidates understand where the market's going, and providing support to our customers even beyond recruitment, helping them grow their businesses, helping the access to talent. So we're real excited about our positioning going into 2026. If you need any help, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, reach out to our team. We'd love to set up a call and meet with you and take you down in the details of any of these areas. We hope you're doing well. I hope you enjoyed this year's year in review and a little bit of our insights about the future. Special thanks to Bibiana, our editor and chief who's been put together this great document and also Aurora who does the graphics and makes it look good. We look forward to seeing you in the market in the industry. We are in DC this week. If you wanna meet up at the ISOA Summit, which is gonna be a great event, we look forward to connecting with everybody. And when it comes to helping people and helping companies, we connect talent with missions that matter. I think that's what's important. Thanks everybody and have a great 2026. All right, so thanks for joining me on another episode of the future of GovCon. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation and some of the bold predictions. If you did, take a second, share it on your social media, subscribe on YouTube. If you have any ideas for future guests or topics you'd like to have covered, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm always there and you can always learn more about precision talent solutions at pts.careers. Look forward to seeing you next week on our next episode. [BLANK_AUDIO]