Samantha Shorter

Samantha Shorter serves as a primary contracting professional within the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), playing a pivotal role in the acquisition and lifecycle management of critical naval aviation systems. She oversees the procurement of advanced aerospace technologies, including aircraft platforms, avionics, weapons integration, and supporting logistics infrastructure, ensuring alignment with the Navy and Marine Corps’ strategic modernization goals. Her work directly supports NAVAIR’s mission to sustain air superiority through end-to-end system development, testing, and sustainment, with a focus on carrier-based and expeditionary aviation capabilities. Shorter maintains consistent, high-impact relationships with leading defense primes including Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and General Atomics, partnering with these firms on complex, technology-intensive programs spanning unmanned systems, radar and sensor development, and flight control integration. Her contracting approach emphasizes long-term vendor collaboration, performance-based contracting, and technical risk mitigation, often involving systems engineering and integration tasks under firm-fixed-price and cost-reimbursement arrangements. Her procurement portfolio reflects a strong preference for full and open competition, with no set-asides applied across her awarded contracts. This underscores a focus on mission-critical capability delivery over socioeconomic categorization, prioritizing technical excellence and industrial capacity over targeted small business set-asides such as 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB. Shorter’s primary NAICS focus areas include Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (541715), Aeronautical System and Instrument Manufacturing (334511), Engineering Services (541330), and Other Support Activities for Air Transportation (488190). She specializes in procuring advanced avionics, flight test instrumentation, maintenance logistics support, and systems engineering services, demonstrating deep technical fluency in naval aviation platforms and mission-critical aerospace domains.