Speaking as someone who works for a small defense contractor, the timeframe is shorter for smallish firms – a few hundred employees and below. Typical programs run a few years – two or three. Cuts usually affect work which would replace current programs when they expire. (It’s pretty unusual for an existing program to get terminated.) If new work doesn’t come in as anticipated then you can usually see ‘the cliff’ fairly far in advance – six months to a year. That said, it’s pretty tough to forecast more than a year in advance. Take anecotes for what they’re worth but I was watching my own cliff approaching for nearly a year and then just a couple months before ‘dropoff’ a new program came in which kept me going for six months and things stabilized – for awhile – during that period. Long term forecasting is difficult. (Not a deep statement but a truism worth repeating.)

One can hope…