Northrop Grumman Corp. in late June celebrated exceeding $1 billion in work subcontracted to small businesses under the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Joint National Integration Center Research and Development Contract.
The company marked the milestone in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Huntsville, two communities that had the most significant contributors to the JRDC. Northrop Grumman’s Huntsville-based small business partners in the JRCD effort include COLSA Corp., Davidson Technologies Inc., decibel Research Inc., IERUS Technologies, Penta Research Inc. and Tec-Masters, according to company officials.
“We’ve been, in Alabama, successfully working with local businesses for years and we see these relationships continuing for the decades to come, strengthening our teammates and working toward the next billion dollars, ” says Dan Verwiel, vice president and general manager of the Missile Defense and Protective Systems Division, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.
Northrop Grumman awarded 49 percent of its JRDC subcontracting effort to small businesses. The small business teammates and suppliers are in various classes of small business concerns including small disadvantaged business, woman-owned small business, HUBZone small business, veteran-owned small business, and service-disabled veteran-owned small business.
As the Missile Defense Agency’s prime contractor of the JRDC since late 2005, Northrop Grumman leads the highly interdependent activities necessary to enhance the Ballistic Missile Defense System and bring capability improvements to warfighter operations, including missile modeling and simulation, ground and flight tests, war games, military exercises and mission-critical operations. Besides Huntsville, those efforts involve operations at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado; Fort Belvoir, Virginia and many other global locations.
Text by Dave Helms
