Kristen Smith 
- SBA has approved the mentor-protege joint venture
- Bridge Defense is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business
- Venture targets AI, mission applications and cyber defense work
OMNI and Bridge Defense have formed OMNI-Bridge Defense Solutions, a mentor-protege joint venture approved by the Small Business Administration to pursue software work for the Department of War, the intelligence community and national security agencies.
The partnership will focus on artificial intelligence-enabled data capabilities, mission-critical applications and cyber defense, OMNI said Wednesday.
“We’re excited to collaborate with OMNI to deliver cutting-edge solutions in classified environments,” said Bridge Defense President Cooper Bradley.
“Bridge Defense and OMNI share a mission-first ethos and a similar approach to rapid, customer-focused development. This partnership builds on Bridge Defense’s recent momentum and we expect it to accelerate delivery for customers across the Department of War and the Intelligence Community from day one,” Bradley added.
Whether AI can be trusted in high-consequence decisions is the focus of a full panel at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2027 Defense R&D Summit on Feb. 4. The event will also include sessions on building trusted models from commercial data and securing the innovation base. Save your seat now.
What Does Bridge Defense Bring to the Venture?
Bridge Defense, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business staffed with cleared engineers and veterans, builds software, deployable edge computing infrastructure and secure network delivery platforms.
The company landed a one-year agreement in early October through the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s Tradewinds acquisition ecosystem, making up to $63 million in cleared software engineering capacity available to the Department of War, beginning with U.S. Special Operations Command. The agreement covers CodeBridge, a custom software development product that pairs cleared engineering teams with Farspan, a development platform built for classified environments. CodeBridge earned awardable status in the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace in 2025.
Bridge Defense bought Syntelligent Analytic Solutions in April, adding all-source analysis, multi-intelligence collection management, geospatial and cyber analytics, and media exploitation to a portfolio that also includes ComputeBridge, its ruggedized edge computing hardware.
“We are thrilled to partner with Bridge Defense who brings a similar disruptive mindset to the status quo,” said Paul McQuillan, chief growth and strategy officer at OMNI.
“The collaboration will accelerate transformational mission outcomes to the most significant challenges facing our nation,” he added.
What Does OMNI Bring to the Partnership?
Founded in 2017, OMNI works with the Department of War, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, delivering DevSecOps, rapid software development, enterprise cloud and platform work, alongside offensive and defensive cyber, data, and AI capabilities.
The company secured a $427 million contract last year for cloud and DevSecOps support for the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency’s national background investigation services. In February, it completed a Capability Maturity Model Integration Level 3 benchmark appraisal across all six domains.
OMNI acquired AI company Nara Logics in June, expanding its portfolio with Nara Logics’ Synaptic Intelligence Platform, an explainable AI engine designed to translate mission data into actionable insights for analysts, commanders and operators. The platform uses a neuroscience-inspired architecture to produce auditable reasoning behind each recommendation rather than black-box outputs.
OMNI’s portfolio includes Astoria, its metadata management platform, and ACDC, its real-time data access platform.
