WHO'S REALLY FLYING THE FAA'S BIGGEST TECH BET? Billions of dollars. One winner-take-all contract. And a lobbying campaign that's starting to look a lot like a script.
America is about to make one of the most consequential infrastructure decisions in a generation — and the fight to win it has moved off the runway and into the shadows. The Federal Aviation Administration wants to rip out the aging, fragmented systems running the National Airspace System and replace them with a single new backbone: the Common Automation Platform, or CAP. The ambition is real. The stakes are enormous.
The rule for winning it should be simple. Find the safest, most advanced, most secure, most proven system on Earth. Then make every qualified company fight for the right to build it. That's not what's happening. As billions of taxpayer dollars come into play, the real battle has shifted — away from engineering demonstrations and government evaluation rooms, and into lobbyists' offices, political back-channels, PR firms, and social media feeds. Some of the relationships behind that campaign deserve a much harder look.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. THEN FOLLOW THE MESSAGE. On September 1, Breitbart News ran a story with a headline built to alarm: “Aviation Experts Sound National Security Alarm as FAA Considers Air Traffic Control Vendors with Strong China Ties.” The target: Indra and Thales, two companies reportedly in the running for the FAA modernization — and their business ties to China. Let's be clear: national security belongs in this conversation. Every company entrusted with America's skies should face brutal scrutiny — cybersecurity, ownership, supply chain, foreign influence, all of it. But there's a second question readers should be asking just as hard:
Who benefits from this story being told?
One of the companies competing for CAP is Leidos — a massive U.S. government contractor and longtime FAA technology provider. Leidos's lobbyist in Washington is CGCN Group. Federal disclosures show CGCN pulled in $90,000 in lobbying income from Leidos in Q1 2026 alone. CGCN, meanwhile, has a documented relationship with Breitbart — Breitbart itself has called CGCN a partner in Washington policy events, including programming featuring senior Trump administration officials. Then came the September 1 article. The story leans hard into the China ties of Leidos's competitors. Near the end, a Leidos spokesperson gets the final word — calling for companies with significant China connections to face heightened scrutiny. Then the amplification began. A senior director at Leidos shared the Breitbart story on LinkedIn, declaring that national security and cybersecurity “must be central” to who builds the backbone of American aviation.
Figure 1. LinkedIn post by a Leidos senior director sharing the Breitbart article.
None of this alone is damning. Companies are allowed to advocate for themselves. Sharing favorable coverage isn't proof that Leidos ordered up the story. But stacked together, the pattern raises a fair question:
Where does legitimate corporate advocacy end — and an influence campaign aimed at a multibillion-dollar federal contract begin?
THEN SOMETHING EVEN MORE INTERESTING HAPPENED
The LinkedIn post didn't stay contained. A senior technical adviser at Peraton publicly jumped into the comments.
Figure 2. Public LinkedIn comment by a Peraton senior technical adviser supporting Leidos's stated competitive positioning.
That's not a small detail. Peraton isn't a bystander in this competition — the FAA named Peraton the Prime Integrator for its Brand New Air Traffic Control System initiative. According to the FAA, the Prime Integrator provides centralized leadership for the entire modernization and helps manage acquisition and deployment of new capabilities. FAA materials go so far as to call Peraton a “full partner” in BNATCS. That role comes with enormous responsibility. And yet, responding to the Leidos post, the Peraton adviser publicly wrote:
"Leidos's combination of deep NAS experience, domestic accountability, and national-security mission focus [is] particularly compelling." Maybe that's just one employee's personal opinion. But given Peraton's extraordinary position inside the FAA modernization effort, the optics matter.
How can every technology provider trust a neutral competition when personnel from the government's own Prime Integrator are publicly championing one bidder? Is this collusion? or something else that still deserves attention — the appearance of bias, sitting inside a system where independence is supposed to be non-negotiable.
THERE'S ANOTHER RECORD WORTH EXAMINING If competitors' histories matter, examine everyone's history. Not selectively. Comprehensively. That means foreign relationships and cybersecurity, yes. It also means results. America has spent decades and billions of dollars trying to modernize air traffic control. ●
The GAO reported in 2024 that the FAA considered 51 of its 138 air traffic control systems unsustainable.
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Another 54 systems were flagged as potentially unsustainable.
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Leidos has been a major provider of these very systems — earning billions from the FAA — and none have been modernized.
Fixing exactly that is the whole point of the Trump Administration's push at the FAA. The FAA isn't running CAP because the current architecture is fine. It's running CAP because the current architecture has failed to keep up. So the most important question isn't:
“Who knows the existing system best?” It's this:
“Who has already built the future?”
Those are two very different questions — and only one of them should decide a decadeslong contract.
FORGET THE LOBBYISTS. SHOW US THE TECHNOLOGY. There's a fast way to cut through all this noise: put the systems on the table. Not the companies. The technology. And ask the question that matters most:
Where is this technology operating successfully today? Indra's ManagAir platform, for instance, isn't a concept on a slide deck. Indra says its air traffic management technology is already deployed internationally, supporting significant portions of global airspace. That doesn't automatically make it right for America.
Prove it. Demonstrate it.
BEING “AMERICAN” SHOULD MEAN DOING WHAT'S BEST FOR AMERICA Critical software and operational data must be locked down. Sensitive development must be tightly controlled. Supply chains must be secure. No foreign government should ever touch America's critical aviation infrastructure. Make those requirements absolute, no exceptions. But once every competitor clears that bar, the government owes the American people one thing: the best outcome, full stop. That's what America First should actually mean in federal acquisition. ●
Not American incumbent first.
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Not Washington contractor first.
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Not the company with the most lobbyists first.
American passengers first. American air traffic controllers first. American national security first. American taxpayers first. If an American company has the best technology, it should win — outright. But if another company brings a substantially more advanced, operationally proven platform, and can deliver it through an American-controlled structure that satisfies every national security requirement, the FAA needs the courage to choose it.
Competition doesn't weaken America. Competition is exactly how America became the world's technology leader.
LET THE BEST SYSTEM WIN.