Carahsoft Awarded $12 Million Air Force Deal to Probe ICBM Supply Chain

The Reston, Virginia, IT provider will identify gaps and risk in the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile industrial base under a firm-fixed-price contract completing by July 2029, the Air Force said.

First Published: July 27, 2026, 1:19 PM ET

RESTON, VIRGINIA — Carahsoft Technology Corp., a Reston, Virginia, government IT solutions provider, won a maximum $12 million firm-fixed-price contract to assess supply-chain risk across the Air Force’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile enterprise, as announced on war.gov.

The award funds software services to identify gaps and risk assessments in the ICBM industrial base and supply chains. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center obligated fiscal 2026 research, development, test and evaluation funds of $731,250 at the time of award. Work will run at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and the Air Force expects completion by July 2029.

“The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider,”Carahsoft describes itself as the Master Government Aggregator supporting federal, state and local agencies across cybersecurity, multicloud, big data and artificial intelligence, according to wwt.com.

The contract marks the first award to Carahsoft in 2026 and the 148th Department of Defense contract recorded in Virginia during the year, according to firestore:contracts. The deal falls far short of the company’s record award of $510 million, yet it sits within the Air Force portfolio’s year-to-date range, which spans a low of $17 to a high of $5.6 billion. The acquisition drew four offers in a competitive process, the Air Force said. Contract officials assigned the identifier FA8204-26-C-B004. Carahsoft carries designations as a small business, a woman-owned small business and a service-disabled veteran-owned small business.

Supply-chain reviews carry weight for a weapons system the Pentagon is racing to modernize. The land-based leg of the nuclear triad depends on aging components and a narrow set of suppliers. Mapping those dependencies helps program managers spot single points of failure before they stall production. Taxpayers hold the stake, because the broader ICBM modernization effort ranks among the costliest procurement programs in the federal budget.

For the average reader, the contract has no direct effect on daily life. It reflects how the government spends defense dollars on the software and analysis that underpin nuclear deterrence, work performed far from public view at a Utah air base rather than on a factory floor.

This has happened before. The Pentagon routinely hires outside firms to audit the health of defense supply chains. Industrial-base studies have become standard practice as the department confronts sole-source suppliers and materials shortages. Such assessments feed directly into procurement decisions for major weapons systems.

The next decision rests with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Hill Air Force Base, which administers the contract through its scheduled completion in July 2029. A date for any follow-on award has not been announced.

Government contractors auditing the ICBM force follow a long line of predecessors at Hill Air Force Base. The base opened in 1940 and became a hub for missile maintenance during the Cold War, servicing Minuteman missiles first deployed in 1962, according to britannica.com. Those weapons, numbering in the hundreds across the northern Plains, remained on alert for decades. The Minuteman fleet still stands watch today, and the software audits now under contract aim to keep that force supplied until its planned replacement enters service.

This contract represents the 1st contract awarded to Carahsoft, in 2026, bringing the company’s total contract value for the year to $12,000,000. It is also the 148th Department of Defense contract awarded in Virginia during 2026. While this is not the largest contract ever awarded to Carahsoft, whose record stands at $510,000,000, it is notable within the Air Force portfolio. Specifically, it falls between the 2026 Air Force portfolio’s year-to-date minimum of $17 and maximum of $5,600,000,000. Overall, this award was announced among 12 Department of Defense contracts issued nationwide on July 27, 2026.