Scott Nicholas
The Defense Department has awarded a potential five-year, $99.4 million contract to the Utah State University Research Foundation to help the Missile Defense Agency develop and field an integrated, layered ballistic missile defense system.
The USU Research Foundation and its affiliate Space Dynamics Laboratory will research, engineer, analyze and test systems designed to protect the U.S. and allies against ballistic missile threats, the foundation said Wednesday.
“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,” said H. Scott Hinton, president of the USU Research Foundation.
“One of our focuses will now be to identify DoD needs that align with SDL’s core competencies allowing SDL to provide collaborative solutions using this new UARC contact as a vehicle to perform the work,”added Niel Holt, Space Dynamics Laboratory director.
MDA serves as the primary sponsor of the USU Research Foundation’s projects to build electro-optical sensor systems, ground, airborne and space rated instruments, payloads and data compression and visualization tools for sensor analysis.
The contract was awarded in August and work will occur at the foundation’s Logan, Utah-based facility through Aug. 16, 2021.
