114 Army analysts face layoffs as Raytheon blurs future of $173M contract at Ft. Irwin
A Northern Virginia-based firm says it’s shuttering an intelligence unit at the U.S. Army National Training Center with layoffs and a permanent facility closure in two months, as recent moves by Raytheon Technologies Corp. point to either a sudden shake-up or an early end for the largest active government contract at Fort Irwin.
Valiant Global Defense Services Inc. — operating as Valiant Integrated Services LLC at Fort Irwin since 2018 under a subcontract from Raytheon — informed California regulators last week that all 114 of its employees at the Army NTC will be laid off on July 30.
“This closing will involve cessation of all operations and layoff of all employees at the site,” the Herndon, Virginia-based firm stated in a May 15 filing reviewed by the Daily Press.
What remains unclear is the extent to which the damage is limited to Valiant’s corporate offices rather than a true jolt into unemployment for its current workers and a potential sign of broader blows to come.
All 114 workers subject to Valiant’s looming layoffs work in Operations Group Building 990 on Inner Loop Road, at the heart of the military base’s residential hub. Their specific positions, as defined in the filing by Cetta Flosi, Valiant’s head Strategic People Partner, include:
101 “TAFF Specialists,” short for Training Analysis Feedback Facility
7 Operations Planning/Team Leads
4 Lead Planners
1 Project Manager
1 TAF Lead Analyst
It marks the second large layoff notice in two months by a private subcontractor of the Army’s massive Mojave Desert training center less than 40 miles north of Barstow. This military town last counted Fort Irwin’s NTC as the employer of 60% of its labor force, according to the city’s latest annual report.
Read more: Fort Irwin contractor to lay off 60 at Army National Training Center war-simulation sites
The first Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification came in mid-March, when Florida-based PULAU Corp. filed notice that 60 “Range Sustainment” employees would be permanently laid off at the NTC by April 16. One difference is that the California Employment Development Department classified PULAU’s filing as only a permanent layoff, while Valiant’s more recent filing is more broadly listed as a permanent closure.
But due to the complex nature of government contracting, the true employment outlook for Valiant’s training-analyst workers when the July 30 layoffs kick in is still murky.
In the end, their fate lies in Raytheon’s hands.
The layoffs, Flosi wrote in the filing, are occurring because “we were notified by our Prime Contractor of their intent not to exercise the final option year of the contract.”
In this case, Valiant’s “Prime Contractor” is Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon, the Daily Press confirmed with federal disclosures and first-hand sources. This multinational military-tech titan in 2021 surpassed $15 billion of net sales in both its missiles-and-defense business and its intelligence-and-space business, separate from its vast aerospace operations, according to Raytheon’s annual report.
A prime contract exists when a government agency, like the Army, engages directly with an outside entity, like Raytheon, to strike an agreement in which the outside entity provides goods or services in exchange for taxpayer funding directly from the agency.
Prime contractors often don’t take sole responsibility for the duties they owe an agency. Instead, they can dole out slices of their government funding to separate entities who, in turn, agree to perform slices of the contractual duties. This is a subcontract, with the second outside entity being the subcontractor.
Raytheon won an Army contract in mid-2018 for what appears to be myriad “mission support services” critical to the monthly training rotations and combat simulations at Fort Irwin’s NTC. The contract carried a potential total value of $171 million, according to federal disclosures on USASpending.gov.
Raytheon tapped Valiant as a subcontractor in October 2018 and has paid the company at least $10.3 million in sub-awards from its Fort Irwin contract funds in the time since, per the disclosures.
The contract now carries a current total value for Raytheon of $173 million, including $33.5 million of emergency COVID-19 money. The potential total value now stands at $222.1 million if Raytheon accepts the option to extend its Fort Irwin contract for a final year with a new end date of July 30, 2023.
Yet, with a couple of months left to solidify that extension, it’s unclear how the mega-contractor feels about another year at Fort Irwin.
The cryptic nature of Valiant’s new layoff notice doesn’t help, as it raises the question of whether Raytheon is merely cutting off that specific subcontract with a plan to replace or preparing to end its Army contract more broadly.
“Unfortunately, I'm unable to provide any additional detail or information,” Valiant spokesperson Justin Garrison said in an email when asked if the layoffs result from Raytheon ending only Valiant’s subcontract or the prime contract in its entirety.
Raytheon spokesperson Tara Wood said she couldn’t identify the contract in question in response to multiple Daily Press inquiries. In response to an initial inquiry, she asked in an email, “Do you have details about the product or system this subcontractor worked on?”
When provided a copy of the WARN notice filed May 15 by Valiant that describes the specific site and positions subject to the incoming layoffs, the Raytheon spokesperson still couldn’t identify the contract in question.
“Despite the info you forwarded, I have not confirmed the contract or specific program this is connected to,” Wood wrote, adding that she would continue working on it. The Daily Press then provided a link to an Aerotech News article from 2018 that announced Raytheon had won the contract but didn’t receive a response.
Fort Irwin didn’t respond to a request for comment, though its spokespeople have previously said the base doesn’t comment on contractor-subcontractor issues.
The union representative for the 101 hourly workers subject to the incoming layoffs, Valiant’s TAFF Specialists, remains upbeat.
“Any time someone refers to it as a layoff, I think that that always, like, scares individuals,” says Joelle Depue of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 725. “I think, though, that in this capacity, it’s definitely more of a transition. But until the transition is complete, it’s kind of still that nervous energy, which is typical around service contracts.”
Depue, the IAMAW’s area director for all hourly workers under the Raytheon contract and any of its subcontractors at Fort Irwin, says she received short notice of the Valiant layoffs. Despite being the workers’ union rep, she says she first learned the layoffs were on the table less than a day before Valiant issued its notice.
Still, she says all indications she’s gotten thus far are that a new company will be brought in to replace Valiant. The current Valiant workers will be positioned for rehiring.
“There is, and there will be a company that will be, I guess, awarded that work,” Depue said.
“Who that company is, at this time, is unknown. I’m waiting for a finalized decision from the prime, Raytheon, for me to know so I can also guide the members. So I don’t know as of yet. As far as I know, that award has not been determined.”
Charlie McGee covers California’s High Desert for the Daily Press, focusing on the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: 114 Ft. Irwin Army analysts to be laid off in Raytheon twist
