A year after U.S. Transportation Command terminated HomeSafe Alliance's Global Household Goods Contract for cause, the litigation that followed looks different than many expected. HomeSafe, the KBR-led joint venture that once held the up-to-$17.9 billion military moving contract, said in its June 2025 termination announcement that it was "considering all legal options" — but as of July 2026, no HomeSafe challenge to the default termination has surfaced on any public docket. The cases actually in court target its parent instead: a securities fraud class action against KBR in Houston and a WARN Act class action over abrupt layoffs. Military moves, meanwhile, have been pulled from TRANSCOM entirely and handed to a new Pentagon agency.

How an Up-to-$17.9 Billion Contract Collapsed

TRANSCOM awarded the Global Household Goods Contract to HomeSafe Alliance — a joint venture between KBR, which holds a 72 percent interest, and Tier One Relocation — in November 2021. The contract handed a single commercial move manager responsibility for roughly 300,000 personal property shipments a year, work the Government Accountability Office values at about $2 billion annually. GHC operations began in April 2024 and quickly unraveled. According to GAO's September 2025 review (GAO-25-107771), TRANSCOM terminated about 7,400 of the roughly 20,000 shipments initiated under the contract due to HomeSafe's failure to meet performance requirements or lack of capacity to manage them. The Army suspended new HomeSafe bookings in April 2025, and on June 18, 2025, TRANSCOM issued its termination notice, citing the contractor's "demonstrated inability to fulfill their obligations and deliver high quality moves to Service members," as Stars and Stripes reported.

HomeSafe disputed that characterization, saying it "performed to the fullest extent possible considering the limitations placed on it" and blaming government delays and opposition from legacy movers. "I'm confident that we were turning the tide on the antiquated and broken military move system," CEO Bobby Nicholson said in the company's statement.

The Cases Actually on File

The biggest live case is Norrman v. KBR, Inc., No. 4:25-cv-04464, a securities fraud class action filed September 19, 2025 in the Southern District of Texas and assigned to Judge Keith Ellison. According to the case summary published by Levi & Korsinsky, the complaint covers investors who bought KBR securities between May 6 and June 19, 2025. It alleges that on a May 6 earnings call — weeks before the termination — KBR executives told investors the GHC "continued to ramp" with "significant operational improvement" and projected $300 million to $500 million in 2025 HomeSafe revenue — while, the complaint alleges, TRANSCOM had harbored serious performance concerns for months. When the termination became public, KBR shares fell 7.29 percent to $48.93 on June 20, 2025, then another 2.65 percent to $47.63 the next trading day. The lead plaintiff deadline passed November 18, 2025; the docket shows the case still pending.

The second front is employment litigation. In a WARN Act class action filed by Berger Montague on June 30, 2025, former employees allege that HomeSafe and KBR, as joint employers, laid off more than 200 workers in late June 2025 without the 60 days' advance notice federal law requires; the suit seeks up to 60 days of back wages and benefits.

What about HomeSafe suing the government? The closest thing on record is narrow: GAO reported that, as of June 2025, HomeSafe had appealed the task order terminations underlying TRANSCOM's demand for repayment of about $3.2 million in management fees, with litigation ongoing. A challenge to the default termination itself would be a bigger swing — a contractor can ask the Court of Federal Claims or a board of contract appeals to convert it into a termination for convenience and open the door to cost recovery. None has surfaced. KBR's annual report, filed with the SEC on February 26, 2026, describes the termination as "unexpected" while disclosing no appeal, claim or lawsuit challenging it. The filing states that all HomeSafe operations, including run-off work, ceased as of January 2, 2026, and that KBR booked a $55 million net loss from the discontinued business in fiscal 2025. The pre-termination protest wave is over too: Court of Federal Claims dockets show the challenges legacy movers Suddath Companies and Total Military Management filed against the contract in late 2024 were both closed on July 18, 2025.

Military Moves Now Run Through a New Pentagon Agency

The termination triggered a structural overhaul. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood up a PCS Joint Task Force in May 2025 to stabilize the summer moving season, then in January 2026 ordered it converted into a permanent organization. The Personal Property Activity formally stood up on May 1, 2026 at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, under Army Maj. Gen. Lance Curtis, reporting to the Secretary of Defense through the acquisition and sustainment undersecretary rather than TRANSCOM. Moves themselves flow through the legacy tender of service network of commercial movers — the system GHC was supposed to replace. Military Times reported the 2026 peak season running ahead of last year: 138,570 household goods pickups through June 30 versus 134,282 at the same point in 2025, with a 24/7 call center that has fielded more than 20,000 inquiries since August 2025. Nothing in the sources reviewed for this article indicates DoD has announced a successor move-manager contract.

What It Means for Contractors

The GHC collapse is now the government's case study in single-award concentration risk. GAO found TRANSCOM lacked "sufficient, comprehensive information" about contractor capacity, performance and costs — and DoD concurred with recommendations it expects to complete by November 2028, signaling tighter capacity vetting in any future moving procurement. For publicly traded primes, Norrman is a reminder that optimistic earnings-call statements about a troubled contract can become securities fraud allegations within weeks of a termination. HomeSafe's yearlong silence on the default termination shows how hard such fights are to win when the performance record is contested. Firms eyeing an eventual recompete should watch the Personal Property Activity, not TRANSCOM, for the first signals.

Sources