Awarded Up To $99.4 Million For Missile Defense System Research

The Utah State University Research Foundation and its Space Dynamics Laboratory announced that it has received an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract valued at up to $99.4 million over the next five years from the Department of Defense.

The contract award supports the Missile Defense Agency's mission to develop and field an integrated, layered, ballistic missile defense system to defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phase of flight. To meet its mission, the MDA requires research, engineering, science and technology, analysis, test and fundamental technology research for state of the art systems, operation hardware and software and associated technology creation.

"This contract validates, and is a testament, to the hard work the men and women of the Research Foundation and SDL have been doing for decades for our customers," said H. Scott Hinton, president of the USU Research Foundation. "We will conduct technical planning, R&D, and testing and engineering work related to cutting edge and proof of concept systems, and participate in the early stages of future Department of Defense or NASA technology initiatives."

The MDA is the primary sponsor of the USU Research Foundation and its Space Dynamics Laboratory as a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). SDL's core competencies include electro-optical sensor systems research and development; ground, airborne, and space rated instruments and payloads development, test and evaluation, integration, validation, and operations; data compression, decompression, and visualization for sensor analysis, data exploitation and fusion; phenomenology measurements modeling and simulation; sensor modeling and simulation; and small satellite sensor systems and components.

"For the past 20 years, the Space Dynamics Laboratory has worked together with the Missile Defense Agency as its UARC to respond quickly to their evolving requirements," said Niel Holt, director of the Space Dynamics Laboratory. "One of our focuses will now be to identify Department of Defense needs that align with SDL's core competencies allowing SDL to provide collaborative solutions using this new UARC contract as a vehicle to perform the work."

(Infographic provided with USU news release)

FMI: www.sdl.usu.edu