The work will be done under a five-year, $869 million MACRO (Mission Awareness Capabilities Ramp-up and Optimization) II competitive contract recently awarded by the U.S. Army, the company announced April 30.

“This program is designed to help the joint force turn growing volumes of data into clear, operationally relevant insight, with the goal of enabling warfighters to understand the battlefield and act faster than the enemy,” said Chad Haferbier, Leidos senior vice president of decision advantage. “We are excited to partner with the Army and joint partners to accelerate how we develop and integrate mission systems for multi-domain operations.”

Source: Leidos

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Under the $454.9 million contract, Leidos will work with Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to transform the Air Force’s multi-cloud environment. The improvements are designed to boost security, increase automation and simplify day-to-day operations, all while helping reduce costs and enabling Air Force teams to manage cloud operations faster and with greater confidence, making it easier for more units to adopt and scale cloud services.

“Modernizing Cloud One helps the Air Force deploy mission-critical operations faster and defend them more effectively,” said Steve Hull, president of Leidos’ digital modernization. “It also creates a secure, repeatable cloud foundation that other Department of War organizations can adopt, helping to remove barriers to cloud adoption and enabling teams to move faster and more securely to help meet mission demands and maintain a strategic edge.”

By streamlining cloud processes and reducing complexity, the program is intended to accelerate cloud adoption across Air Force units worldwide, making it easier for them to move applications to the cloud, while strengthening cyber defenses and enhancing mission readiness.

Source: Leidos

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Federal security operations centers (SOCs) face a growing challenge, which has accelerated with the explosion of AI assisted threats: too many alerts and not enough people, leading to alert fatigue. Leidos and Dropzone AI aim to solve that problem by deploying agentic artificial intelligence to help handle routine cyber investigations, so human analysts can focus on more complex and critical threats.

“Our customers are looking for practical ways to use AI—not experiments,” said Steve Hull, president, Leidos Digital Modernization. “This partnership helps federal agencies address the growing threat landscape while working to improve response times, reduce analyst fatigue, and stay compliant with federal security rules.”

This partnership blends the best of federal cyber with leading-edge, commercial-proven cyber capabilities. Leidos brings deep experience running secure, government-approved cyber environments. Dropzone AI provides commercially proven defensive AI agents to perform actions traditionally handled by human security analysts, drastically increasing their capacity to quickly review alerts, gather context, and recommend next steps and perform follow-on actions if authorized.

Leidos is accelerating the deployment of this commercial capability to the government in two ways.  First, Leidos is working with Dropzone to ensure their commercial AI SOC analysts understand federal SOC operations. Second, Leidos and partner Second Front Systems (2F) are deploying Dropzone AI within 2F Game Warden to expedite adoption within the federal market.

As the preferred services partner for Second Front, Leidos works to accelerate the onboarding and authorization of critical technologies helping the government take advantage of advances in the commercial market safely and compliantly. 2F Game Warden is designed to make it easier and faster for commercial AI software, such as Dropzone AI, to move into government classified and unclassified environments while maintaining strict security standards. The goal is a solution that reaches sensitive environments faster—without compromising security.

“Dropzone’s AI agents have already automated the equivalent of more than 160 years of manual analysts work across over 300 commercial organizations, enabling security teams to respond to threats up to 90% faster and with less manual effort” said Edward Wu, Dropzone AI’s founder and CEO. “Partnering with Leidos, using 2F Game Warden, allows us to bring that proven capability into highly regulated government environments, so critical agencies can sense, understand, and act on ever-intensifying cyber threats at machine speed.”

Source: Leidos

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NIST’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Consortium is a groundbreaking initiative to simplify cryptographic discovery, ease migration complexity, and promote system interoperability post-migration. This achievement positions Leidos as a leader in the race to secure the future, underscoring commitment to driving innovation, shaping policy, and delivering scalable, secure solutions for federal missions and critical infrastructure, according to the company.

Quantum computing promises to unlock new possibilities in science, technology, and industry — but it also threatens to disrupt the very foundations of classical cryptography. Traditional encryption methods, which protect sensitive data and secure communications, could be rendered ineffective by the immense computational power of quantum computers.  Recognizing this urgent challenge, NIST established the Post-Quantum Cryptography Consortium to ease the transition to their post-quantum cryptographic standards. This initiative is critical essential to strengthening the resilience of mission-critical systems and protect national security in the quantum era.

As a member of the consortium, Leidos will play a pivotal role in advancing research and shaping policy for the migration to post-quantum cryptography. The company’s deep expertise in cybersecurity, mission-critical systems, and cryptographic modernization uniquely positions us to contribute to this vital effort, Leidos said.

Source: Leidos

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Over the next 18 months, Leidos is expected to transition more than 100,000 users to DODNet including the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Manpower Data Center, Defense Media Activity, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and Missile Defense Agency. This next phase of accelerated migration marks a significant step forward in the $11.5 billion, 10-year Defense Enclave Services program.

“Launching the next phase of transformation means executing faster, more seamless migrations to DODNet and advancing the Department of War’s goal to achieve greater savings and efficiencies through enterprise IT consolidation,” said Heidi VanNoy, vice president and division manager at Leidos. “This accelerated effort will help defense agencies realize the full potential of a unified and resilient network, strengthening security, data access and mission outcomes.”

Leidos has been leading operations for the DODNet program since February 2022, consolidating 26 separate networks and 12 help desks into a single, optimized environment. Digital modernization and cyber solutions are key elements of the company’s NorthStar 2030 growth strategy.

Source: Leidos

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Under the $142 million award, Leidos is expected to provide integrated engineering, software development, operations and cybersecurity services to optimize CESO’s secure web applications. The effort includes scalable, AI-driven capabilities designed to help streamline operations, improve secure information access and advance Zero Trust compliance. This is aimed at enhancing decision making, user experience and mission readiness.

“This modernization effort strengthens the digital backbone that supports our nation’s defense and intelligence operations,” said Paul Welch, senior vice president with the digital modernization sector at Leidos. “By delivering secure, unified access to classified information, Leidos is enabling faster decision making, more effective operations and the resilience needed to maintain mission superiority.”

Source: Leidos

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This joint approach to automating security is designed to strengthen cyber defenses, reduce operational risk and streamline time-consuming, often manual and staff-intensive work, helping federal agencies focus on their top priorities.

“Security and risk management should enable the mission, not get in the way,” said Leidos Digital Modernization President Steve Hull. “By partnering with RegScale, we’re helping our customers move faster and stay secure while remaining focused on mission outcomes.”

The Leidos UpHold Armor solution, supported by RegScale, will initially be deployed to support the U.S. Air Force as well as other War Department and federal organizations seeking to strengthen cybersecurity, lower risk and modernize security operations.

UpHold Armor embeds automated risk management into daily operations across modern and legacy systems, while the RegScale CCM platform continuously tracks security controls and automatically collects the evidence agencies need to support ongoing system authorization to operate (ATO) and meet federal cybersecurity standards and authorization requirements such as NIST SP 800-53, and FedRAMP. Leidos and RegScale are offering a practical path to demonstrating compliance in real time, not just at audit time.

“Leidos knows that government agencies need to accelerate and become more agile,” said Travis Howerton, co-founder and CEO of RegScale. “Together, we’re turning ATO into a continuous capability—so agencies can move at the speed of innovation and stay focused on securely delivering their mission.”

Source: Leidos

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AI governance refers to how organizations put guardrails around the use of AI. Making sure systems are reviewed, approved, and monitored so leaders understand how they work, what risks they carry, and when they are ready to be used. It helps ensure AI is deployed responsibly, with transparency, accountability, and alignment to legal, ethical, and mission needs.

Built on Leidos’ AI that has been deployed in real-world missions over decades, the collaboration focuses on removing friction from AI adoption while maintaining accountability. By combining Trustible’s automated AI governance platform with Leidos’ experience building agentic capabilities at scale in national missions, the initiative helps agencies unlock innovation while managing AI risk.

As government agencies respond to new federal directives calling for accelerated AI alongside strong oversight, the need for governance that enables progress has become increasingly clear. The collaboration with Trustible helps operationalize governance through automation, enabling agencies to move from policy to practice more efficiently. At its core, the approach aims to ensure AI governance is outcome-driven—supporting real mission results as well as compliance.

“AI governance can’t be a manual, after-the-fact process—especially as agencies begin to adopt more autonomous and agentic systems,” said Gerald Kierce, co-founder and CEO of Trustible. “Working with Leidos, we’re using automation to streamline governance from the start—reducing friction, strengthening control, and helping agencies deploy AI faster while maintaining the oversight and risk management their missions demand.”

Source: Leidos

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O’Connor brings over 30 years of experience in dynamic business leadership, driving innovation in technology and delivering mission-critical solutions to some of the nation’s most complex challenges. Prior to his current role, O’Connor held several senior leadership positions at Leidos, where he oversaw the company’s Cyber & Analytics, National Solutions and Homeland Security businesses. In these roles, he led the delivery of advanced software solutions, mission-enabling capabilities and analytic services to key agencies throughout the Intelligence Community.

“I’m excited about what this talented team will accomplish in 2026. Our new sector brings together the incredible technology and talent we have across our company to support our nation’s most vital Intelligence Community programs,” O’Connor said in a statement announcing the move.

Before joining Leidos, O’Connor served at the Lockheed Martin Corporation in numerous engineering roles and executive level positions for 25 years, where he managed technology, innovation and research portfolios. He also served in leadership roles for the company’s international business and intelligence divisions. In these roles, he provided management, strategic direction and customer engagement for programs focused on systems engineering, development and cyber solutions. He led and played a key role in successful mergers and acquisitions of several companies with advanced engineering, AI/ML and cyber capabilities during his career at Lockheed Martin and Leidos.

Source: Leidos

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MerlinX helps red-teams benefit from more accurate and beneficial insights drawn from their own data using an AI technique called graph retrieval-augmented generation. This enables the LLM to not only draw from the knowledge base of the operator’s organization but also build a knowledge graph from it to acquire contextual understanding.

Normally, operators would have to review the results of their commands and assess their next moves. This often forces them to break from the operation and take time to research.

The downtime usually entails “figuring out some technical problem and applying risk management to reduce the likelihood of getting caught and preserve the operation,” said Marc Brasher, cyber AI research scientist for MerlinX and an experienced red-team operator.

Instead, by drawing from knowledge of prior operations and known threat patterns, MerlinX alerts them about potential risks, potential targets and safe steps to advance mission objectives.

MerlinX’s insights appear directly through a chatbot interface within the operator’s workstation, so operators don’t need to switch between tools. MerlinX has been tested in realistic mission environments and is designed to support a variety of operational needs. Leidos has built it on adaptable architecture to support integration into cloud, local or distributed environments.

“We recognize that customers have different architectures or classification requirements and have developed MerlinX with that in mind,” Brasher said. “Each of MerlinX’s components can be deployed in a customized fashion.”

MerlinX is a co-pilot not just in the field but also throughout operator training and after completed missions. The AI assistant can create realistic environments for teams to rehearse missions in lifelike conditions, reducing the time to build test networks and freeing operators to focus on strategy, execution and skill development.

Gavin Black, director of cyber autonomy for Leidos, confirms this point: “MerlinX pushes the boundary of offensive cyber by turning every interaction into a living map of the operation to prevent operators from chasing data and allow them to focus on shaping the mission.”

After a mission is complete, teams can continue to improve themselves by using the replay and evaluation tools, since each action was captured to be analyzed. This feature also helps them analyze the AI’s recommendations and fine-tune it for future operations.

Leidos continues to evolve MerlinX as a foundation for broader research into cyber autonomy by going beyond AI-assisted workflows and toward agent-driven operations. The platform is designed to help teams manage larger, more complex missions with greater precision, consistency and reduced operational risk.

Source: Leidos

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