Built for the mission, not the market.

The defense industrial base is facing a workforce crisis that rarely makes headlines but shapes everything. More than 70,000 cleared positions sit unfilled. Submarine production runs at roughly 60% of target. A generation of defense workers is approaching retirement with no structured pipeline behind them.

Meanwhile, 200,000 service members transition out of the military every year. They are the most qualified talent pipeline in the world — security-cleared, mission-tested, technically trained. Yet the tools connecting them to defense employers are job boards built in the 2000s.

Worst of all, the data doesn’t exist. The Department of Defense cannot track its own SkillBridge outcomes. Employers can’t see readiness signals before they hire. There is no feedback loop, no intelligence layer, no system of record for the most consequential talent market in the country. That is the gap Orbital fills.