The Company Selling TSA's Future Won Its Largest Contract First

On March 27, 2026, a session titled "TSA Gold+ and One-Stop Security" appeared on the official agenda of the ACI-NA Airports@Work Conference in Chicago. The session described Gold+ as a new architecture for airport security screening, one in which private capital, technology, and workforce would operate checkpoints under TSA regulatory oversight, with the federal officer removed from the equation entirely. TSA officials Andy Haskins, Innovation Program Manager, and Keith Mueller, Director of Mitigation Operations, were scheduled to appear. Whether they attended could not be confirmed. A government shutdown was ongoing at the time of the conference.

On the same day, the conference agenda listed two closed sessions titled "PS&S Airports Only with TSA," running from 9:00 to 10:15 AM and 10:45 AM to noon in the same Great Lakes A room. TSA's Steve Lorincz, Acting Executive Assistant Administrator for Security Operations, and Susan Tashiro, Acting Executive Assistant Administrator for Operations Support, were named as speakers. Whether they attended could not be confirmed from the attendee roster.

Two days before the scheduled Chicago sessions, on March 25, 2026, TSA Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified before Congress. Gold+ was not disclosed. It had not been disclosed in her January 21 testimony, her February 11 testimony, or her April 16, 2026 testimony, which came three weeks after the scheduled Chicago sessions. Four congressional appearances. No disclosure.

On May 14, 2026, TSA sent a broadcast email to every employee announcing Gold+ and launched a public website at tsa.gov/goldplus. The program TSA had not mentioned to Congress was introduced to its own workforce and the public on the same day.

On the Gold+ panel in Chicago, Trey Huelskamp, a director at VMD Corp, was confirmed present through a VMD corporate LinkedIn post. VMD Corp merged with Xcelerate Solutions in February 2024 and operates as part of the Xcelerate Solutions portfolio. Xcelerate Solutions is a portfolio company of McNally Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm. At the time of the conference, VMD held active TSA screening contracts at 13 airports across the country with four confirmed by name in federal contracting records and combined potential contract value on those four approaching one billion dollars. VMD had won the largest of those confirmed contracts, the SFO recompete, just six months earlier. The company with a director on the Gold+ panel is, by confirmed contract value, among the largest SPP contractors in the country.

That convergence is the subject of this briefing.

VMD's SPP Portfolio

VMD Corp operates under the Screening Partnership Program IDIQ vehicle HSTS0516DSPP913. VMD merged with Xcelerate Solutions in February 2024. Xcelerate is a portfolio company of McNally Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm. Xcelerate's own published materials state that VMD employs more than 700 aviation security professionals at 13 U.S. airports spanning Category I, II, III, and IV classifications. Four of those contracts are confirmed by name in federal contracting records as of May 2026.

The Xcelerate-Gigaplex Connection

VMD's parent company, Xcelerate Solutions, is a founding joint venture partner in Gigaplex, a remote security screening technology that transmits X-ray baggage screening data in real time to offsite review locations. The Gigaplex joint venture partners are Xcelerate Solutions, The Chertoff Group, and SureScan Corporation. The Gigaplex system was developed with funding from the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate Small Business Innovation Research program.

Gigaplex allows security officers at a centralized facility to review checkpoint images from airports at entirely different locations. In April 2026, Gigaplex publicly demonstrated a live transatlantic screening data transmission between Boston, Massachusetts and London, England at the Passenger Terminal Expo. The system was added to the GSA Schedule under contract GS-35F-250GA on July 1, 2025, making it directly procurable by TSA without a separate competitive procurement.

TSA issued the Checkpoint of the Future RFI the same month Gigaplex became available on GSA Schedule. That RFI solicited industry proposals for technology-driven checkpoint transformation and generated 122 published questions and answers. Among them, industry asked whether Gold+ would require congressional authorization. TSA's response directed industry to propose workarounds to that requirement.

What VMD Was Telling Airports in March 2026

In March 2026, VMD published a document titled "Myth Busting: The Screening Partnership Program," directed at airports considering SPP participation. The document addressed nine stated myths about the program.

Myth 8 addresses workforce continuity directly. VMD stated that per the Service Contract Act, SPP vendors assuming airport screening responsibilities from TSA are required to give qualified incumbent employees right of first refusal for their position and with the same or better wages. VMD presented this protection as a reason airports should not fear that SPP transitions would harm the existing workforce.

Myth 6 in the same document states that all SPP screening personnel receive compensation and benefits equal to or greater than their federally employed counterparts, citing ATSA. The documented SFO back pay dispute, in which Covenant's screeners went two years without a federally mandated pay increase and filed a Department of Labor complaint, is evidence that the statutory requirement does not enforce itself automatically.

Myth 2 states that SPP is not privatization and that SPP vendors do not own or control airport screening operations. That characterization accurately describes the current SPP model. It stands in direct contrast to the Gold+ architecture, which TSA's own February 2026 briefing document describes as a model in which the federal officer is not present at the checkpoint at all.

The Gold+ Program

TSA produced a formal Gold+ briefing document in February 2026, bearing TSA branding and the TSA seal, with a dedicated program email address: TSAGoldPlus@tsa.dhs.gov. The document was obtained by a TSA officer at Orlando International Airport. It describes Gold+ as a structurally distinct program from SPP, a third privatization model in which the federal officer is not present at the checkpoint.

On May 14, 2026, TSA confirmed it publicly. The agency's own website describes Gold+ as redirecting federal screening funds into private partnerships where industry manages both technology and workforce, with private capital covering costs outside the federal budget process. The federal officer is not mentioned.

The FY2027 DHS Congressional Budget Justification, released March 31, 2026, proposes eliminating 8,400 positions and approximately 9,400 full-time equivalents across the TSA workforce, including 2,462 TSO positions specifically, offset by a proposed $477.3 million privatization funding increase. The same budget requests $20 million for e-Gates. Gold+ does not appear by name in the budget justification, consistent with a program architected to proceed without requiring a specific congressional appropriation. The White House OMB budget document released April 3, 2026 contains an explicit heading titled "TSA Privatization."

The SFO Transition and the Workforce at Stake

The SFO contract represents approximately 1,042 screeners who worked at San Francisco International Airport under Covenant Aviation Security for nearly a decade. Covenant held two consecutive SFO contracts totaling more than $1.1 billion in obligated value. Its workforce was represented by SEIU-United Service Workers West under a collective bargaining agreement negotiated as recently as October 2024 and running through December 31, 2026.

That CBA established a wage structure tied to SFO's Quality Standards Program, a municipal wage floor set by San Francisco International Airport under its worker retention ordinance. The QSP rate plus the CBA differential produced the $31.11 per hour starting wage that Covenant advertised in April 2026. The applicable federal floor for SFO security screeners under the Service Contract Act Wage Determination 2004-0153 is $18.96 per hour. The $31.11 figure represents more than a decade of union bargaining above that floor.

Covenant's CBA includes a successor clause requiring any successor contractor to be notified of the agreement's existence, and an explicit commitment to comply with SFO's airport worker retention ordinance. That ordinance requires successor contractors to retain qualified incumbent employees during a transition period. Whether VMD has honored the retention requirement is a subject of ongoing inquiry. Against Giants has sought information from SEIU-USWW and will report findings when available.

Covenant's incumbent SFO contract continues to run through June 30, 2026 and was being incrementally funded as recently as March 30, 2026. As of May 4, 2026, Covenant is confirmed still performing screening operations at SFO. Covenant's back pay dispute with its workers was never publicly resolved before the contract changed hands.

Covenant's Legal Challenge

Covenant Aviation Security filed two bid protests at the Government Accountability Office challenging the SFO recompete solicitation 70T05025R5900N001. Both were denied simultaneously on February 12, 2026 in a decision that remains under protective order.

On March 12, 2026, twenty-eight days after losing at GAO, Covenant filed suit against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims, case number 1:2026cv00409, before Senior Judge Marian Blank Horn. The cause of action is a post-award bid protest under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491. VMD intervened as a defendant on March 17, 2026. The government and VMD each filed motions to dismiss on April 3, 2026. Covenant filed its opposition on April 21, 2026. Sealed hearings with a court reporter present were scheduled May 7 and May 12, 2026. All substantive filings remain under seal.

The Statutory and Oversight Questions

Against Giants has raised the following questions with congressional offices engaged on this matter. They remain unasked and unanswered on the congressional record.