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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Any insight on:
*  DOD Contractors?
*  FFRDCs (APL, MITRE, IDA, CNA etc)
Thank you.[/quote]

It varies widely.  Many pending DoD contracts appear to be frozen for the moment, which impacts all of the above.  Some contracts, particularly for purchases for airplanes or ships or vehicles, seem unaffected by any of this.  New task orders on existing contract vehicles do not seem frozen, but the CR means the government side is unsure how much budget they really have this year.  Some body shop contractors have been told to hire specific recently laid off probationary gov’t employees with critical skills (e.g., nuclear engineering for subs and carriers) for full time work at the government site.  Otherwise, all of the above seem to have either slowed or frozen hiring until it is more clear whether they will have funding for the associated work.  Usually, the open billet is being kept, but it just is not being filled at this time.

My bet is there will be an increased reliance on body shop contractors to work FT at the government site for the near-term — 6 to 24 months.  The contractors generally cost visibly more per hour than the fully burdened cost of the same salary civil service person, so it actually is raising costs and spending, rather than saving any money.  However, the work still needs to get done somehow.

The potential for cost savings in DoD mostly lies in NOT buying equipment that does not work well, but that Congress keeps insisting the services buy.  The big defense contractors spread jobs around the various states to benefit their profits.  Famously, Lockheed has managed to spread the C-130 manufacturing work across all 50 states, making it hard politically for Congress to stop buying more C-130s.  They are not unusual in doing this.  The civil service staff layoffs are good as political marketing and as sound bites, but they cannot move the needle much on DoD budget/spending because the people are not the big costs in DoD.  Each of the uniformed services has at least one large equipment acquisition that the service does not want or need, but that Congress insists upon buying.

After the new DNI invites DOGE over there, I fully expect similar layoffs and chaos will ensue in that part of government.[/quote]

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