Exclusive: CenCore unveiling defense-contractor collaborative in Utah
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CenCore Group will on Friday unveil the Integrated Warfighter Ecosystem, a coalition of 150 businesses it has networked to win defense and intelligence-community contracts and arm U.S. troops with the best available gear.
Why it matters: "For me, personally, this really is the culmination of several years of work, to get this in place," CenCore chief executive Adam Fife told Axios.
- "When I spent my years downrange, we would get some really cool, engineered shit, but it didn't work."
Driving the news: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is expected to speak at the launch and inaugural summit, to be hosted at CenCore's 55,000-square-foot headquarters in Utah.
- Senior defense officials were invited, as well.
State of play: A vast majority of IWE members are small to midsize businesses. Many are veteran-owned. And some have never even worked with the Defense Department.
- Their product lines comprise both hardware and software: autonomy, command-and-control, counter-drone, energy, manufacturing.
What they're saying: The Defense Department has "leaned very far forward, and they have started to put out dozens and dozens and dozens of very specific requirements that no single service provider can meet or match," Fife said.
- "To provide the best of, from a solutions perspective, you've got to work together. You have to collaborate. And so the IWE exists to enable that collaboration."
- Membership in IWE is described as "deliberate and limited."
Context: CenCore makes mobile SCIFs and deployable data centers. It employs about 1,700 people and operates across more than two dozen sites.
- Last month, it won a hush-hush contract with the intelligence community. (Fife declined to describe it in detail.)
- Before that, it won a $44 million contract to build up to eight relocatable SCIFs at Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic sites.
What's next: The IWE is expected to have offices in Washington, D.C., and Utah.
The bottom line: "The CenCore tagline is, 'The warfighters are shareholders.' We have no investors," Fife said. "The tagline for the Integrated Warfighter Ecosystem is, 'By the warfighter, for the warfighter.'"
Go deeper: On the defense-tech road with Jamie Dimon
