The U.S. Air Force has awarded Leidos an $85 million ceiling contract for digital design tools to help engineer future aircraft, the second such award in as many days under the same research program. The Air Force Research Laboratory made the award on Sept. 19, 2026, one day after Anduril Industries received a nearly identical contract.
Both awards fall under VOLARE, formally the Digital System-Level Mission-Driven Integrated Design Methods for Aerospace Systems. The contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity agreements, meaning the $85 million is a ceiling, not guaranteed funding, and the Air Force will issue task orders as needed. Eight companies competed for the awards.
Leidos, based in Reston, Virginia, will perform work in Dayton, Ohio, with the contract running through Sept. 18, 2036. Anduril’s contract, awarded Sept. 18, runs through Sept. 17, 2036. The near-identical contract numbers — Anduril’s FA2391-26-D-B013 and Leidos’s FA2391-26-D-B015 — along with matching ceilings and the shared eight-offer count indicate the Air Force structured VOLARE as a multi-award IDIQ, selecting more than one contractor to compete for task orders rather than picking a single winner.
No funds are obligated on either base agreement. The first task order under the Leidos award is worth $75,000 in fiscal 2026 research funds; Anduril’s first task order is worth $50,000.
VOLARE covers two goals: building software that can model an aircraft’s overall vehicle systems, and developing methods for designing thermal management systems — the cooling architecture that keeps engines, electronics and sensors from overheating. Modern military aircraft pack growing amounts of high-power radar, computing and directed-energy equipment into the same airframe, making heat management a design challenge in its own right.
Leidos is a large federal technology and engineering contractor with a long history supporting defense, intelligence and civilian government agencies, though the company has not previously been publicly tied to this specific style of digital-engineering work for aircraft design in the way Anduril has through its recent missile-development prize win.
Sources: Defence Blog · Defence Blog