Rapidly changing policies at the Pentagon this year, from civilian workforce cuts and canceled contracts to a mandate for buying software faster, have changed the landscape for defense contractors.
And for Booz Allen Hamilton—one of 10 consultant firms targeted for cuts in a federal government contract review amid the shakeup—the plan is to lean into those changes.
“It was a big pivot,” Andrea Inserra, president of Boox Allen Hamilton’s global defense business, told Defense One. “The whole world is under pivot….everything is changing…and I think there’s goodness to that.”
Inserra, who previously led the company’s aerospace business, took the job in April and was immediately thrust into contract reviews—an experience that led to trips to meet clients across the Defense Department to understand “their most pressing issues, and how can we as a company invest, either to co-create, build or develop” particularly with dual-use technologies.
“My role over the last, I’d say, four or five months was to figure out what changes. And I think everything changes,” Inserra said. “I just got back from Honolulu. I met with 12 of our customers—that’s everyone from the commander of INDOPACOM to USARPAC to PACAF, and many clients and customers in between. And everyone has a very consistent message: that the mission ahead of us in 2027 is getting much closer. So, companies like Booz Allen that have been partners with the Department of Defense for 70-plus years need to pivot as quickly as possible on technology.”
Booz Allen Hamilton reported 7- and 6-percent bumps in defense and intel business, respectively, this quarter compared to last year, the company said in its 2026 first quarter earnings call on July 25. The company has also beefed up its venture arm for a total of $300 million to fund tech developments.
Defense One spoke with Inserra about how Booz Allen Hamilton plans to compete in a rapidly changing defense ecosystem that prioritizes results and products.
What’s an example of where Booz Allen is co-investing? How are you shortening the timeline between development and delivery?
A product called MDK, a modular detachment kit. It’s a unit that stands alone at the tactical edge and provides airmen line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight communication. We invested in this capability, we bought other capabilities, integrated [them] together to have command and control at the edge. The U.S. Air Force hired Booz Allen to deploy those units, 12 of them, across Europe and Africa in the last year and a half. And we did that.
A year and a half later, the U.S. Air Force through their joint all domain and command and control capabilities called [Advanced Battle Management System]—they need to be able to do that on the worldwide stage…the next capability, and it’s called TOC-L. Booz Allen just won Tactical Operations Center-Light, TOC-L, to deploy 70 more of those units, now ruggedized.
We built it as a prototype and it’s operational. But now…we’re going to partner, and we did partner with L3Harris, so that we can mass produce these capabilities. And they will deploy to Europe and the Pacific.
Five years ago, [Booz Allen] won contracts that you’d have many years to go build the prototype. You had time to test it. That time just doesn’t exist like we had before. So, on behalf of the agenda of the president and the secretary of defense and all the secretaries below that, the agenda is right in that we have to accelerate. So as a company we have to figure out who we partner with, because we can’t produce everything on our own. [We have] 20 tech facilities for engineering and manufacturing operations. That’s helpful to an extent. But if you had to get into mass production, we absolutely need to look at how we partner with high throughput rates of production.
When will those 70 units be deployed?
We kicked off about a month ago, so they will be deployed in the next 18 months, probably. We’ve already built the original, and so we’re adding to them. And as you know with technology, you always improve upon the capability. So we’ll be doing that, of course, too.
Where are you looking to invest in the next six to 18 months and how much?
The [Booz Allen Ventures] fund started at $100 million. We’ve put $200 million more into that fund. Our corporate venture campaign—that’s 17 companies…everything from cyber to AI to space. We started a group called the Defense Technology Group this past year, and that is all things for warfighter technology. So, the other area that will be an investment, in addition to AI, cyber and space, will be warfighting technology…situational awareness as a commercial product of [the Tactical Assault Kit], it’s called Sit(x). Those are capabilities that are deployed today, [and] as we continue to think about how you put the information on the airmen, the soldier, the sailor, those are capabilities that we will continue to evaluate and then invest in.
What’s the focus for the rest of this year?
Command and control is critical, so [commanders] have more information to make decisions. So how do you connect the multiple sensors and networks that are on ships, submarines, space assets, ground assets? That’s the No. 1 topic that we talk about. How do you integrate all that information and, using AI, which we are one of the largest producers of AI capability, how do you then take that and [make] better informed decisions?
We were asked to deploy 5G in Guam…because that’s where you do most of your shipyard maintenance and supplies. We’ve now digitized the ability to track assets—ships and other assets for those ships—through a 5G wireless network. We’ve stood that up and it will have an [authority to operate] by September. We have two leaders in Guam today operating that network. Because of that experience, we were just hired by the Navy to deploy 5G on approximately 37 ships that are, today, in the Pacific, Europe, and the U.S. It’s rapidly accelerating technology. And again, we do it through a number of ways: build it on our own, we co-build…we would partner with someone like Ericsson, of course. And then we invest.
We’ve invested in almost 17 different companies, and these are early-stage companies that we believe [can add] ability to the Department of Defense.
[One is] a new startup company called Firestorm Labs…they do additive manufacturing, so they can produce drones or parts if you need supplies at the edge. What’s actually really interesting, from my perspective, is the additive manufacturing, because that allows you to, at the point of need, determine what you need to produce. And that’s probably one of the more critical needs as we move to all these autonomous capabilities.
The Defense Department is reducing and eliminating a lot of IT contracts, especially consulting contracts, which affected Booz. How are you restructuring?
It’s not just Booz Allen that has pivoted. But all companies in this ecosystem have pivoted, right. To your point, because our customers were purchasing a lot of capabilities by Booz Allen. Like when we did the GSA review, and they looked at every contract. I looked at all 1,100 contracts in the Department of Defense that we support, and it allowed us to look at them with an objective eye.
The government determines how they want to procure. In the Department of Defense, a majority is purchased through cost plus, fixed fee…because they don’t know what the requirements will be on these five-year, multi year contracts. I think that’s going to shift. I think that the agenda of the White House coming down is we need to pay for outcomes. We want to pay for the modular detachment kit. And that’s going to change the acquisition centers all over the department to think differently about how they procure firm-fixed price or outcomes-based contracts. We have to also think about how we would build a proposal to respond and then execute. So we have to learn. That’s where I think things will shift over time. I don’t think it’s going to shift overnight.
What about the consulting business?
We are a consulting firm. I was hired as an engineer into a consulting firm 27 years ago. Seventy percent of our population has technical backgrounds…it’s the combination of technical and mission. And I think the review…helped us understand that there’s about 1 percent of our business, that is what you call consulting. And I think we have to think differently about that. We’re looking at how [to] augment that with technology. And that’s an opportunity to shorten and accelerate the work that we do for those sets of clients.
The Advana contract is in limbo, and that was something that Booz Allen was initially a part of. How has Booz recovered from not being able to continue that contract?
I’m very proud that we built Advana. It’s the single proof of record for the department at the enterprise level. That’s why it was designed. And we didn’t do it alone. We worked with many companies to do that, and I’m proud that we were able to stand that up on behalf of the Department of Defense. But all technology evolves. And so the way that we’re looking at it, is leveraging that data experience.
When I was in EUCOM three, four weeks ago, I saw our data experience on the operational center wall. So you have Palantir, they have the Maven Smart System—that’s enabled by data from Advana and data that Booz Allen engineers enabled through data engineering to that platform. That’s where I see a lot of our roles today. What comes out of Advana, I think, you and I could probably debate it—I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of things that will change, and for us, we just have to continue to pivot.
And so I’m proud when I see the capabilities all over the world that I’m seeing deployed in terms of understanding where capabilities are positioned on a map in a major operations center. And I know and understand Booz Allen’s behind that map.
The Advana experience has been an incredible opportunity to be part of, but now it’s leading us to the next capabilities. For us as a company, it’s the first time talking about our brand. For 27 years, I never really had to tell people what we did, because our customers, our clients, knew what we did. But I think this pivot that I mentioned earlier changes how we have to show up. And so you’re going to see behind me—that’s our new [marketing slogan]—‘It’s in our code,’ it’s who we are. Now, we have to tell people what we do, because…unfortunately, when you don’t know, you can make assumptions, like we all do, about capabilities.
Is the company shrinking back from that space? What’s next after Advana?
I wouldn’t use the word ‘shrinking’ because I think our work is actually expanding. As I go to the different components, like the Navy, and I look at their instance of Advana, they’re looking at augmenting it for, in one example, autonomous systems. They need to make sure that they can track all their assets. Booz Allen is working on those engagements as we speak. Because of the Advana experience. We still have a core team that’s running and operationalizing Advana today. I can’t comment on where the government is going to go in terms of procurement in the future. But I do believe Booz Allen will have a role to play because of our invaluable experience. No one has that experience. How we bid on the work, I think we’re all trying to figure out as that’s released. But the engineers and the data scientists and the software engineers that built Advana with our partners—so again, not alone—I believe, like opportunities ahead of us are not limited in any way. The technology is changing so fast you can never rest. It becomes almost outdated 18 months in. And I think it’s moving faster than that. So anyone that believes they own a capability, I just don’t think it exists anymore. I think that’s what’s really shifting, is that you have to be extremely agile to see where the technology is heading, and then to help our customers and our clients get to that, to that position. So Advana is just the beginning to me, it was never an end. And I believe that we’ll continue to modernize that platform. The government will do that. We will do that. I don’t see that changing.
Who is Booz Allen, in this period of transformation and rapid change?
A company that builds technology. We are looking for organic and inorganic capabilities that become the technology for the future. So we will build it, we’ll co-develop it, as I mentioned earlier, or we’ll invest in it. But it all stems around technology that meets the mission. So we have 10,000 men and women who have served and continue to serve. That’s invaluable with the technology. So you put the mission understanding with the technology, that’s, to me, the brand of the company that I represent. And like you said, it’s just how quickly we can find the capability to best meet the needs of our clients and customers, is really the critical question.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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