The Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA), McClellan, California, awarded 10 companies positions on the $25.36 billion Advanced Technology Support Program V (ATSP V) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, the agency announced. The awardees are: Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, Ohio); Boeing Defense, Space & Security (Berkeley, Missouri); General Dynamics Mission Systems (Fairfax, Virginia); HII Mission Technologies (Fairfax, Virginia); L3Harris Technologies (Melbourne, Florida); Leidos (Reston, Virginia); Northrop Grumman Systems (Falls Church, Virginia); Raytheon (Tucson, Arizona); The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (Cambridge, Massachusetts); and Vertex Aerospace (Madison, Alabama). The vehicle has a five-year base ordering period with a three-year and a two-year option, for a potential 10-year performance span. The program is the most consequential DoD microelectronics acquisition vehicle since the Trusted Foundry Program was established in 2004, and directly addresses the supply chain vulnerability created by decades of domestic semiconductor manufacturing contraction that left defense-critical electronics production concentrated in foreign facilities beyond U.S. government visibility or control.
Program Background
ATSP V is DMEA's primary acquisition vehicle for hardware and software engineering support spanning microelectronics analysis, design, prototyping, testing, integration, and production. The program addresses a documented vulnerability in the defense industrial base: the United States lost substantial domestic microelectronics manufacturing capacity over roughly two decades as commercial production shifted to foundries in Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China. By 2020, no U.S.-owned fabrication facility could manufacture leading-edge chips at less than 10-nanometer process nodes, and even legacy defense-grade processes relied heavily on foreign-sourced materials and equipment. This created supply chain risk for defense-unique components — integrated circuits used in weapons guidance systems, electronic warfare platforms, and secure communications equipment that cannot be sourced from untrusted foreign suppliers without creating unacceptable technology transfer and supply assurance risk for classified programs.
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 allocated $52.7 billion to rebuild domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research capacity, including manufacturing incentives that have attracted investments from TSMC, Intel, and Samsung in Arizona, Ohio, and Texas. ATSP V provides the contracting infrastructure to inject the resulting technologies into military systems — bridging the gap between commercial foundry investment and the defense-specific integration, testing, and assurance work required before new chips can be certified for weapons systems and classified programs.
DMEA operates the Trusted Foundry Program, which provides DoD access to accredited domestic semiconductor fabrication for classified and export-controlled designs. Foundry accreditation is a multi-year process involving facility inspections, supply chain audits, and process validation against military specifications. ATSP V work supports Trusted Foundry customers and broader DoD programs requiring assured microelectronics supply chains — including Missile Defense Agency kill vehicle programs, Air Force electronic warfare systems, and Navy submarine sonar and combat control processing electronics that operate in environments where commercial off-the-shelf components are unsuitable due to radiation, vibration, or temperature constraints.
The $25.36 billion ceiling reflects DoD's intent to consolidate a larger share of defense microelectronics work under a single vehicle compared to earlier ATSP iterations. Initial obligated funding at award was $65,000 — a nominal activation amount consistent with standard IDIQ practice — with all substantive funding flowing through competed task orders among the 10 awardees. The Defense Post reported Northrop Grumman's selection in February 2026; Washington Technology confirmed the full roster of all 10 awardees shortly thereafter.
Acquisition Strategy and Task Order Competition
DMEA structured ATSP V as a multi-award IDIQ with mandatory task order competition among the 10 awardees rather than a single-award or fixed-allocation mechanism, reflecting lessons from earlier ATSP iterations where work concentration created bottlenecks and reduced competitive pricing pressure over time. Under the competition rules, each task order requires a minimum number of quotes unless DMEA's contracting officer makes a written determination that only one awardee is capable of performing the specific work — a high bar designed to maintain active competition throughout the vehicle's decade-long life even as industrial capabilities and program requirements evolve.
The task order competition model creates incentives for awardees to build technical depth in niche areas where they can differentiate from the broader pool: firms that develop specialized capabilities in radiation-hardened electronics for space applications or secure enclave chip design for cryptographic programs can earn a disproportionate share of task orders in those areas without needing the generalist portfolio that a single-award vehicle would require. This specialization dynamic is expected to produce meaningful differentiation among the 10 awardees over time, with the public task order competition record serving as a visible indicator of each firm's technical depth in specific microelectronics domains — information that program offices across DoD can use to anticipate which ATSP V awardee to target for a given specialized requirement, making the task order history a form of publicly accessible technical reputation management for all 10 companies.
What It Means for Contractors
- Ten primes hold seats; task orders are competed among them — firms not on the vehicle cannot compete directly but can pursue subcontracting with any of the 10 awardees, and the vehicle's scale means nearly every defense microelectronics niche will generate subcontracting activity at some point in the ordering period.
- DMEA publishes task order opportunities through the Trusted Foundry Program portal and SAM.gov; eligible work ranges from chip design and wafer fabrication to system-level integration, environmental stress testing, and lifecycle sustainment of obsolete components requiring form, fit, and function replacements.
- Small businesses with microelectronics or trusted-foundry expertise should engage the 10 primes directly, as individual task orders will carry small business subcontracting requirements aligned with the CHIPS Act implementation strategy's defense industrial base diversity objectives.
- The vehicle's potential 10-year span means firms investing in Trusted Foundry accreditation today are positioning for a multi-year revenue pipeline — accreditation lead times of two to four years mean that companies beginning the process now will qualify as suppliers before the vehicle reaches its midpoint around 2031.
- A successor acquisition is unlikely before 2033; the program's design as a long-term vehicle reflects DMEA's intent to provide acquisition stability while domestic microelectronics manufacturing capacity continues to mature under CHIPS Act investment and commercial market dynamics.