The contractors behind military hardware: production rates, backlog, workforce, castings, chips and the bottlenecks that push delivery dates to the right.
The statutory conditions, approval thresholds and follow-on production path behind the Pentagon's fastest-growing contracting instrument — and the data gaps GAO says still obscure it.
Roughly a quarter of federal contract dollars flow to small businesses under rules that reserve entire competitions for them — a system with its own thresholds, programs, and failure modes.
Revenue tells you what a contractor shipped last year; bookings and backlog tell you what it will ship for the next five — if you know which lines to trust.
Acquisition gives defense startups scale and gives primes software speed — and per the deal record, what survives the first two years depends on how the buyer integrates.
Weapons systems run on chip generations commercial phones discarded years ago, and the policy machinery around trusted supply is catching up to that reality.
Nearly every American missile flies on a solid motor from one of two companies, and both are mid-expansion after decades of boom-bust demand.