The Pentagon's combatant commands are again headed for Leidos' Enclave network, and General Dynamics IT is again on the outside of the work. The Defense Information Systems Agency posted a revised justification on Monday, Sept. 28, that seeks to add combatant-command network migration to Leidos' Defense Enclave Services contract without competition, Federal News Network reported. DISA concluded that Leidos is the only company capable of transitioning all combatant commands to the Defense Department Network, or DoDNet.
The filing is DISA's second attempt at the same move. Its first, in June, drew a GDIT bid protest that ended with the agency agreeing to corrective action. According to Washington Technology, the new document carries the same justification and approval number (JA26-059) as the June posting, expanded with market research findings, a pricing determination and a longer case for urgency.
How GDIT's Protest Reset the June Sole-Source Plan
Leidos won the potential $11.5 billion Enclave contract in 2022 to migrate the Pentagon's 22 administrative and support agencies to DoDNet. DISA first tried to fold the combatant commands into that effort in June, following a May memo from Pentagon Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies directing that the commands be migrated by the end of fiscal 2028.
In that June justification, DISA waived the need for market research and named Leidos as the only company capable of the work, Washington Technology reported. GDIT protested, arguing the agency had relied on inadequate market research, failed to conduct a pricing determination and failed to describe steps to remove barriers to future competition. GDIT also questioned the urgency DISA cited and said it could perform the work itself.
The protest was dismissed after DISA agreed to take corrective action: conducting market research, making a new acquisition approach decision and developing a new acquisition plan.
What 24 Sources-Sought Responses Changed, and What They Didn't
DISA ran the market research GDIT said was missing. The agency released a sources-sought notice in late July and a second in late August. The notices asked industry whether firms could migrate the geographic and functional combatant commands into the DoDNet architecture, whether they could meet the department's mandated Sept. 30, 2028, deadline, and whether they could execute the migrations without disrupting ongoing operations.
Twenty-four companies responded, including GDIT, Leidos, Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture, Peraton and Science Applications International Corp., according to Washington Technology. The outcome matched June's. "No other vendor provided responses that demonstrated it could provide these services to the scale, magnitude and speed required by the government," DISA wrote in the justification, as quoted by Federal News Network.
The process itself drew criticism. DISA gave industry only 24 hours to respond to its second sources-sought notice, and a source familiar with the matter told Federal News Network the approach called into question whether real market research was the agency's true intent.
DISA's New Argument: Access to the Migration Script Author
The revised document adds a technical rationale that did not appear in June. DISA argues that any vendor migrating the commands by 2028 would need access to "the migration script author" to adapt DoDNet's automation scripts, Active Directory schemas and identity management structures. Washington Technology reported that DISA says earlier attempts to use other vendors for smaller migrations ran into that barrier.
According to Federal News Network, DISA wrote: "Leidos has the institutional knowledge of the DoDNet architecture that enables them to rapidly adapt the DoDNet automation scripts to accelerate migrations." The agency added: "Transition to a new contractor would result in unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s critical requirements."
DISA also points to Leidos' track record. Since 2022, Leidos has migrated 40,000 users across 900 sites at 14 agencies to DoDNet, and DISA says migrations have accelerated from months to weeks because of automated scripts adapted for the network. The combatant-command job is larger: 11 commands with 231,000 users at 200 global sites, according to DISA's July sources-sought notice as cited by Washington Technology.
Does the $11.5B Ceiling Hold, and What Does Competition Cost?
DISA says the action will not raise Enclave's $11.5 billion ceiling. The revised justification now includes an estimated value for the combatant-command work, but DISA redacted that figure, and each task order will be priced separately, Washington Technology reported. That pricing determination answers one of the specific gaps GDIT identified in June.
On cost, DISA estimates a separate competition would duplicate about $15 million in engineering work already performed under Enclave and would make an accelerated migration harder. The agency also expanded its urgency case, citing zero-trust deadlines and the need to harden national security infrastructure against AI-driven threats.
Skeptics questioned whether DoDNet is ready to support the combatant commands at all, Federal News Network reported. Enclave to date has focused on a common environment for back-office functions, and building services that support warfighting commands is a fundamentally different task.
What It Means for Contractors
The DISA filing shows how corrective action can cure a sole-source justification on paper without changing the result. GDIT's protest prompted DISA to conduct market research, add a pricing determination and spell out its reasoning in more detail. The award decision did not move. Firms weighing a protest of a sole-source expansion should expect that a successful challenge may buy a more defensible justification rather than a competition.
The "migration script author" argument deserves attention well beyond Enclave. If agencies accept that an incumbent's authorship of automation scripts, schemas and identity structures makes it the only responsible source for follow-on work, that reasoning could make similar network consolidation efforts harder to compete. Companies bidding on future migration contracts may want to press for government ownership and documentation of those tools at the outset.
Short response windows also matter. A 24-hour turnaround on a sources-sought notice leaves little room for a detailed capability statement, and DISA judged responses on whether they demonstrated scale, speed and risk mitigation. Vendors tracking DoDNet work should keep current capability material ready to submit on short notice.
Washington Technology reported no response yet from GDIT on whether it will file another protest.
