The "Go/No-Go" Imperative: A Rigorous Framework for Disqualifying Defense Opportunities

The "Demo Day" high is a dangerous intoxicant for founders.

You deliver a flawless pitch. A General Officer shakes your hand. A dozen end-users call your technology "game-changing." Your inbox fills with requests for follow-up meetings. The team projects a contract award for Q3.

In reality, you have likely just entered the most lethal phase of the defense market: The Phantom Chase.

A "phantom" is an opportunity that feels vividly real. It possesses enthusiasm, apparent urgency, and high-level support. However, it lacks the structural prerequisites for a transaction: a programmed budget, a validated requirement, and a legal acquisition pathway. For a resource-constrained founder, chasing these phantoms - responding to every RFI, attending every industry day, and flying to every conference - is the fastest way to hemorrhage a seed round and die in the Valley of Death.

"Hope" is not a capture strategy.

Transitioning from a startup chasing noise to a federal contractor winning programs requires the operational rigor to disqualify opportunities ruthlessly. Success depends on a formal Go/No-Go Litmus Test - a set of non-negotiable gates that every pursuit must pass before you spend a single dollar of Bid & Proposal (B&P) funds or a single hour of engineering time.

The Three Gates of Qualification

Before you commit to a pursuit, you must have a definitive "YES" answer to three structural questions. If the answer to any of them is "NO" or "I think so," the opportunity is not a "Go." It is a shaping campaign, or it is a distraction.

Gate 1: The Funded Requirement (The "What") Enthusiasm is not a budget. A requirement is a formal, validated need that has, or will have, a specific "color of money" attached to it.

• The Litmus Test: Can your government contact point to the specific Program Element (PE) line in the President's Budget Request (PBR)? Is it a validated capability gap from a Combatant Command’s (COCOM) Integrated Priority List (IPL)? Is it a documented Urgent Operational Need (UON) from a deployed unit?

• The Red Flag: If the answer is "We are looking for money," or "We hope to get this into the FY26 budget," you are chasing a phantom. You are not in a capture cycle; you are a volunteer for their market research. Most Requests for Information (RFIs) are merely market research for programs that do not yet exist. Responding to them is marketing, not sales.

  
  

Gate 2: The Credible Champion (The "Who") A "good meeting" is worthless without a champion who can navigate the bureaucracy. A true champion is not just an enthusiastic end-user who loves your UI.

• The Litmus Test: Do you have the direct dial of an "Internal Insurgent"—a Program Manager (PM), a Requirements Officer (J8/G8), or a PEO staffer—who has the authority to push paper and the willingness to spend their personal political capital to fight for your solution?

• The Red Flag: If your only contacts are innovation hub scouts, or if you are relying on the enthusiasm of an O-3 (Captain) on the ground, you do not have a champion. That Captain feels the pain, but they have zero influence on the budget or the requirement. If you cannot get a 30-minute follow-up call with the actual Program Office, the deal is dead.

  
  

Gate 3: The Viable Vehicle (The "How") A funded requirement with a champion is still dead if there is no legal mechanism to transfer the funds to your bank account. The government cannot just "Venmo" you $5 million.

• The Litmus Test: Have you and your champion identified the specific contract vehicle?

  • Is it a FAR Part 12 Commercial Item buy via GSA?

  • Is it a Prototype OTA (Other Transaction Authority)?

  • Is it a SBIR Phase III sole-source award?

  • Does the vehicle fit your technology's maturity (TRL)?

• The Red Flag: If the PEO has $5M to spend but attempts to buy your SaaS platform using a 20-year-old hardware maintenance contract, the Contracting Officer (KO) will kill the deal. The vehicle must match the product. If the answer is "The KO is looking into it," you are walking into a regulatory wall.

  
  

From "Hope-Based Capture" to "Strategic Execution"

This framework is not an administrative exercise; it is the central operating system of a mature federal business. It turns your pipeline from a "wish list" into a "plan of action."

• Go/Go/Go: Full capture pursuit. Allocate B&P resources. Assign a capture manager.

• Go/No/No: Shaping Campaign. The problem is real (funded), but you have no champion and no vehicle. Your job is not to sell; it is to find the champion and educate them on the "how-to-buy."

• No/Go/Go: Phantom. You have a great champion and an easy contract vehicle, but there is no money. This is the "Friend Zone" of government contracting. Maintain the relationship, but do not spend resources.

  
  

The "Selective by Design" Ethos

The most successful firms in the defense market bid on fewer opportunities than their competitors, but they win significantly more revenue. They achieve this by refusing to chase phantoms. They understand that a "No" at the qualification stage is a victory - it saves the resources required to win the real "Yes" later.

This is the difference between "activity" and "execution."

Operational rigor is the ability to say "no" to bad revenue. At DualSight, we provide the Strategic Advisory to build this rigorous qualification framework and the Market Intelligence to verify the answers (is the budget real?), ensuring your limited resources are targeted only at winnable opportunities. We help you stop chasing ghosts and start hunting programs.

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