The Navy's cyber and electronic-warfare engineers at Crane, Indiana, are getting a five-year reinforcement worth up to $345 million, after ManTech International Corp. announced Sept. 2 that it won a task order to support Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane Division's Expeditionary C3 and Cyber Division. The award funds research, integration, and field engineering work meant to keep the fleet's tactical networks and defensive cyber tools ahead of adversaries who are moving faster and hitting harder.
The task order runs under the Department of War Information Analysis Center Multiple-Award Contract, known as IAC MAC, a vehicle sponsored by the Defense Technical Information Center that moves technical research funding quickly to specialized contractors. The customer division — NSWC Crane's Expeditionary C3 and Cyber Division — is designated MXL, and the company says the work stretches across electronic warfare, expeditionary warfare, defensive cyber technologies, and the engineering pipeline that turns lab research into fielded capability. Crane, a sprawling Navy installation in southern Indiana better known for munitions and electronic warfare work than for public visibility, has built a growing cyber and C3I research portfolio over the past several years, and this task order extends that pattern.
What NSWC Crane's Expeditionary C3 and Cyber Division Actually Does
NSWC Crane's Expeditionary C3 and Cyber Division sits at the intersection of communications, command and control, and cyber defense for forces operating outside traditional garrison networks — the radios, data links, and network infrastructure that expeditionary Marine and Navy units carry into contested environments. ManTech's task order covers "critical technology areas as integrating sensing and cyber as well as program and project support for defensive cyber technologies, mission assurance and resilience capabilities," according to David Hathaway, ManTech's Defense Sector President, in the company's Sept. 2 release.
That description points to work that goes beyond writing code or patching systems. It covers lab research, systems integration, field engineering to get new capabilities from a bench to a battlefield, testing, training, and the acquisition and operations analysis that helps the Navy decide what to buy next. The five-year period of performance gives ManTech a standing role in shaping how Crane's cyber and C3I portfolio evolves rather than a one-off delivery contract.
Why an Air Force Squadron Is Issuing a Navy Task Order
One detail in the award stands out to anyone who tracks how the Pentagon buys services: the contracting activity behind this Navy-facing task order is the Air Force's 774th Enterprise Sourcing Squadron, not a Navy contracting office. That is a function of how IAC MAC works. The vehicle is a joint, department-wide instrument, and individual service contracting offices can be designated to execute task orders against it regardless of which service ultimately uses the resulting capability. The 774th Enterprise Sourcing Squadron's role here suggests it functions as a specialized contracting office for large, technical multiple-award task orders that cross service lines, giving Crane's program office access to a fast-moving contracting mechanism rather than working the requirement through a slower single-service acquisition.
For contractors bidding on IAC MAC work, the arrangement is a reminder that the customer using a system and the office buying it are frequently two different organizations, and that tracking a specific division's needs — in this case Crane's Expeditionary C3 and Cyber Division — means watching multiple contracting offices across the department, not just the one attached to the end user's service branch.
How This Task Order Fits ManTech's Broader Crane and Cyber Portfolio
This is ManTech's second publicly disclosed Crane award of 2026. In July, the company picked up a $197 million contract for Navy surface radar research, development, testing and evaluation at the same installation — a hardware-and-sensors program distinct from the cyber and C3I research this new task order funds. Together, the two awards give ManTech parallel footholds inside Crane: one on the radar and sensor side, another on the cyber and network side, both feeding the same customer base without directly overlapping in scope.
The new task order is also separate from ManTech's $1.4 billion task order awarded in December 2024 for cyber work supporting the Interagency Intelligence and Cyber Operations Network. That award runs through a different vehicle, serves a different customer set inside the intelligence community, and covers different technical work than the Navy-focused MXL task order. The distinction matters for anyone sizing up ManTech's cyber business: the company is not stacking one contract on top of another for the same requirement, it is building separate positions with the Navy and the intelligence community that happen to share a technical discipline.
ManTech CEO and President Matt Tait framed the award against a broader threat picture rather than describing it as a routine follow-on. "As cyber threats evolve in sophistication and scale, safeguarding our national security infrastructure demands tech-forward innovation and cognitive cyber resilience," Tait said in the company's Sept. 2 announcement. The phrase "cognitive cyber resilience" is company language rather than a term defined in the task order description, but it signals how ManTech is positioning the Crane work inside its broader cyber pitch to the Pentagon — as adaptive defense rather than static patching.
What It Means for Contractors
The award is a data point for two groups of companies. IAC MAC holders competing for cyber and C3I task orders now have a fresh benchmark for what a substantial Crane award looks like in dollar terms and scope, and should expect the 774th Enterprise Sourcing Squadron to remain a live contracting channel for Navy-adjacent requirements even when the underlying customer sits in a different service. Subcontractors and smaller cyber firms looking to team on Crane work have a five-year window to position themselves under ManTech's task order rather than waiting for the next full and open competition.
More broadly, the award underscores how much of the Navy's cyber and electronic-warfare research runs through Crane rather than through more visible commands, and how often that work is procured through joint, department-wide vehicles administered by whichever service office can move fastest — a pattern that rewards contractors who track IAC MAC and similar multiple-award contracts across service lines rather than treating each branch's spending as a separate lane.
