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Two universities recently secured U.S. Air Force contracts.
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC, Laurel, Maryland, and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, were awarded $272 million this month for three projects. Johns Hopkins has two and Vanderbilt one.
For close to $200 million, the Johns Hopkins’ lab will provide research and development engineering services under the Air Force’s Sentinel program, an initiative to comprehensively modernize United States’ land-based nuclear missile system.
It calls for a “full-scale replacement of the missile, launch systems and command-and-control infrastructure with a new architecture designed with built-in adaptability for the digital era,” per the Air Force.
The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, issued the two-year contract on July 20.
A second deal announced July 13 will have the same lab develop, test and evaluate air warfare systems. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Agile Weapons, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, awarded $62.5 million for the work expected for completion July 31, 2030.
Meanwhile, Vanderbilt will be paid $10.6 million for Assured Neuro-Symbolic Software Prototype, an artificial intelligence project.
The work that the Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, New York, awarded July 13 will be performed at Nashville and is expected to be completed by Sept. 29, 2028.
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