Systems Planning and Analysis

Systems Planning and Analysis

Systems Planning and Analysis was founded in 1972 by Phillip Lantz and a group of former naval officers who saw a gap between Pentagon program offices and the analytical rigor needed to support multi-billion-dollar defense acquisition decisions. The firm built its reputation inside the U.S. Navy's Strategic Systems Programs office, providing cost analysis, systems engineering, and programmatic support for the Trident ballistic missile submarine fleet. That relationship deepened over five decades, with SPA analysts routinely placed on-site at the Washington Navy Yard and Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The firm's core work spans maritime systems, undersea warfare, space systems, and national security operations analysis. SPA supports the Navy's COLUMBIA-class submarine program — the $130 billion replacement for the OHIO-class — performing independent cost estimates and risk assessments for the largest acquisition program the Navy has ever undertaken. Confirmed engagements include support for Naval Sea Systems Command, the Missile Defense Agency, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office. The firm also runs the Joint Submarine Industrial Base Council's dashboard, a classified-adjacent data platform that tracks workforce, material, and supplier health across hundreds of submarine component manufacturers. SPA operates across Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Norfolk, with satellite personnel embedded at U.S. Navy bases in Kings Bay, Georgia, and Bangor, Washington. The firm acquired Veracity Forecasting and Analysis in 2024, adding data science and machine learning capabilities for naval readiness forecasting. William Vantine, a former U.S. Navy nuclear submariner who served aboard USS Georgia, has led the firm since 1997, maintaining a near-perfect contract recompete win rate across three decades — a function of institutional knowledge so specialized that alternative bidders routinely fail qualification requirements. The structural differentiator is the firm's embedded-advisor model and its operation of the submarine industrial base clearinghouse. Unlike traditional defense consultants who rotate analysts, SPA places cleared professionals inside program offices for years, effectively becoming part of the government's institutional memory. The firm was also one of the first employee-owned government contractors certified as an ESOP, a structure it has maintained through successive acquisitions and that aligns its cleared workforce with the long-horizon programs it serves.