Aerospace and defense, routed to the right Lightbridge practice.
Lightbridge guides aerospace and defense organizations across the controls that define the sector: AS9100 quality management, earned value management for major programs, and the safeguarding and accounting regimes of the defense industrial base. It works independent and vendor-neutral, through its ERP and Cloud subsidiaries.
The defense industrial base carries a distinct compliance burden.
The defense industrial base, abbreviated DIB, is the network of companies and institutions that supply the United States Department of Defense with the products, services, technology, and research that military capability depends on. It reaches from prime contractors that integrate major weapon systems down to the small machine shops and software suppliers that feed them, well over a hundred thousand companies in total.
What sets the sector apart is not its products but its controls. A defense supplier carries obligations a commercial manufacturer never sees: cost-accounting standards and DCAA audit readiness on government contracts, earned value reporting on major programs, safeguarding rules for controlled unclassified information, export controls on defense technology, and quality standards written specifically for aviation, space, and defense. These are separate disciplines, and Lightbridge treats them as such.
This page is general guidance for aerospace and defense leaders, not legal, audit, or accounting advice. Regulatory specifics, including exact dates, dollar thresholds, and penalties, change often.
Lightbridge routes each aerospace and defense discipline to the practice that owns it.
Quality, program controls, contract accounting, and information security are genuinely separate problems. Rather than hand a supplier one generic team, Lightbridge maps the organization across all of them and points each to the subsidiary with the depth to deliver it.
GovCon project accounting and DCAA readiness
Project cost accounting, indirect rate structures, and incurred-cost discipline for an audit-ready back office, on Lightbridge ERP.
Earned value management (EVM and EVMS)
How earned value measures cost and schedule performance, and what an ANSI/EIA-748 compliant EVMS requires for major defense programs.
CMMC, NIST 800-171, and CUI safeguarding
Documented security controls, a system security plan, and a defensible boundary for controlled unclassified information, on Lightbridge Cloud.
ITAR, EAR, and export control
How export-controlled technical data is segmented, accessed, and protected across people, process, and infrastructure, on Lightbridge Cloud.
Aerospace and defense quality and program standards, explained.
Two standards define how aerospace and defense work is controlled, and both reward a clear, vendor-neutral explanation. AS9100 is the quality management standard for aviation, space, and defense organizations, built on ISO 9001 with sector-specific additions. Earned value management is the project-controls discipline that major programs use to measure cost and schedule performance, governed by the ANSI/EIA-748 guidelines and overseen by the Defense Contract Management Agency.
For the compliance regimes that the GovCon cluster already owns, this hub routes rather than repeats: see the cross-entity government contracting bridge for the full map of accounting, security, and export-control coverage across Lightbridge ERP and Lightbridge Cloud.
Aerospace and defense: frequently asked questions
- What is the defense industrial base?
- The defense industrial base, often abbreviated DIB, is the network of companies and institutions that supply the United States Department of Defense with the products, services, technology, and research needed for military capability. It spans well over a hundred thousand companies, from prime contractors that integrate major weapon systems down to the small machine shops and software suppliers that feed them. Membership in the DIB carries a distinct compliance burden: cost-accounting standards for government contracts, safeguarding rules for controlled unclassified information, export controls on defense technology, and quality standards specific to aviation, space, and defense. Lightbridge guides organizations across these controls through its ERP and Cloud subsidiaries.
- What standards and regulations apply to aerospace and defense suppliers?
- Aerospace and defense suppliers operate under several distinct regimes. Quality is governed by AS9100, the aviation, space, and defense quality management standard built on ISO 9001. Major programs apply earned value management against the ANSI/EIA-748 guidelines, with the Defense Contract Management Agency overseeing the system. Government contract accounting follows the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the DFARS, Cost Accounting Standards, and DCAA audit expectations. Safeguarding controlled unclassified information falls under CMMC and NIST 800-171, and export-controlled technical data falls under ITAR and the EAR. Each regime is owned by a focused Lightbridge practice rather than treated as one undifferentiated service.
- Does Lightbridge work with aerospace and defense companies?
- Yes. Lightbridge guides aerospace and defense organizations across the back-office and compliance disciplines that the sector requires, working independent and vendor-neutral. Its ERP subsidiary handles GovCon project accounting, indirect-rate structures, incurred-cost submissions, and earned value management. Its Cloud subsidiary handles the security and export-control side: CMMC and NIST 800-171 readiness, controlled unclassified information boundaries, and ITAR and EAR data protection. Capability is described at the practice level here; engagements and references are discussed directly rather than published, given the sensitivity of defense work.
- Is AS9100 the same as ISO 9001?
- No, although AS9100 is built on ISO 9001. AS9100 incorporates the full text of ISO 9001 and then adds requirements specific to aviation, space, and defense, including counterfeit-part prevention, product safety, configuration management, and special attention to risk and human factors. An organization certified to AS9100 meets ISO 9001 as well, but the reverse is not true. The dedicated AS9100 explainer on this hub covers the differences and the certification path in detail.
- How does earned value management relate to defense contracting?
- Earned value management, or EVM, is a project-controls discipline that measures cost and schedule performance against a baseline by comparing planned value, earned value, and actual cost. For major United States defense acquisition programs above defined contract-value thresholds, the contractor must maintain an earned value management system that conforms to the ANSI/EIA-748 guidelines, and the Defense Contract Management Agency reviews and accepts that system. EVM therefore sits at the intersection of program management and government contract accounting, which is why the Lightbridge ERP practice owns it.
- Where should an aerospace and defense supplier start?
- Start by separating the disciplines, because they call for different expertise. Quality management and AS9100 readiness are one track, earned value and program controls are another, government contract accounting and DCAA readiness are a third, and information security under CMMC and NIST 800-171 with export control under ITAR is a fourth. Lightbridge maps an organization across all four, then routes each to the practice that owns it, so a supplier is not handed a single generic team for problems that are genuinely separate. The contact form is the place to scope a specific situation.
Standard and agency names such as AS9100, ANSI/EIA-748, ITAR, EAR, CMMC, and NIST 800-171, and product names such as Deltek, Costpoint, and Unanet, are the property of their respective owners; Lightbridge is independent and not affiliated with, or a partner tier of, any of them. Regulatory and standards specifics change often: verify against the official source, including acquisition.gov, the DoD CIO, the Defense Contract Management Agency, NIST, the NARA CUI Registry, SAE and the International Aerospace Quality Group, and DDTC or BIS for ITAR and EAR.
Aerospace and defense compliance is several disciplines, not one.
Lightbridge maps your organization across quality, program controls, contract accounting, and information security, then routes each to the practice that owns it. Independent and vendor-neutral, every step.