Exclusive: Defense contractors unveil collaborative in Utah
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Photo: Courtesy of CenCore
Utah defense contractor CenCore has launched a coalition of businesses that plan to work together to win defense and intelligence agency contracts.
Why it matters: The group — dubbed the Integrated Warfighter Ecosystem (IWE) — could make smaller businesses more competitive in an industry where startups often don't have the resources to wait years for a big government payday, CenCore CEO Adam Fife tells Axios.
Zoom in: The collaboration comes as Utah leaders are trying to beef up the state's defense and aerospace industry.
How it works: About 150 businesses — including 15 in Utah — offer up individual parts for systems that meet specs so complex that normally "no single service provider can meet or match" the requirements.
Case in point: About a dozen of the group's members recently contributed software, drones, anti-jamming features for communications, navigation tools, and other components to protect supply chains and transport routes from attacks.
- "None of those companies by themselves could have responded to that [request] — or even two or three of them," Fife says.
Between the lines: The vast majority of IWE members are small to midsize businesses. Many are veteran-owned.
- Some have never worked with the Defense Department.
Friction point: Fife, who previously worked in the Middle East as a counterterrorism advisor, says those partnerships can help sidestep gear mismatches that cause problems in the field.
- In some of his tasks, incompatible equipment meant "you had to separately look at six different systems to then manually mesh it all together so you could kind of understand what you're looking at," he says.
Driving the news: IWE, which first took shape about 18 months ago, is starting its inaugural summit Friday at CenCore's new 55,000-square-foot facility in Payson.
Context: CenCore makes mobile high-security rooms, called SCIFs, and data centers. It employs about 1,700 people, including about 120 in Utah.
- Last month, it won a hush-hush intelligence contract. (Fife declined to describe it in detail.)
- Before that, it won a $44 million contract to build up to eight relocatable SCIFs at Navy sites in the Atlantic.