A Springville-based defense contractor has assembled roughly 150 businesses into a coalition designed to help small and midsize firms compete for military and intelligence contracts that none of them could win alone. Cencore Group calls the effort the Integrated Warfighter Ecosystem, or IWE, and its inaugural summit is set for Friday in Payson.
A Coalition Built to Beat the Primes
According to Axios, the Integrated Warfighter Ecosystem first began taking shape about 18 months before this week's announcement and now includes 15 Utah businesses among its roughly 150 members nationwide. The group is mostly made up of small to midsize businesses, many of them veteran-owned, and some members have never before worked with the U.S. Department of Defense, the outlet reports. The idea is for IWE members to work together to win defense and intelligence agency contracts by offering individual components for systems with highly complex specifications rather than bidding solo against far larger competitors.
Cencore CEO Adam Fife, who previously worked as a counterterrorism advisor in the Middle East, described the payoff of that pooled approach using a recent example. Per Axios's reporting, Fife said none of the coalition's companies by themselves could have responded to a particular request — “or even two or three of them.” IWE members have contributed software, drones, anti-jamming communications features, navigation tools and other components meant to protect supply chains and transport routes from attacks, the outlet notes.
Sidestepping the Gear-Mismatch Problem
Fife also told Axios that these kinds of partnerships can help sidestep gear mismatches that cause problems for troops in the field — a persistent headache when components from different vendors aren't designed to work together. That structural problem is part of what's known in the defense industry as the acquisition “Valley of Death,” the multi-year gap between a successful prototype and formal Department of Defense Program of Record funding that has been documented by the House Oversight Committee. Small, non-traditional defense tech companies frequently burn through capital during that gap while waiting for federal budgeting lines to catch up to their technology.
Cencore itself is no stranger to landing major federal work. The company employs about 1,700 people overall, including roughly 120 in Utah, and generates more than 95% of its revenue from contracts with the U.S. Intelligence Community, according to TechBuzz News. The firm makes mobile high-security rooms known as SCIFs, along with data centers, and Fife has said Cencore won a classified intelligence contract of its own. In February, the company was awarded a $44 million contract by the Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic to build up to eight relocatable SCIFs for Navy fleet locations, as reported by Utah Money Watch.
Stricter Security Rules Raise the Stakes
Those SCIF units face tougher technical requirements than they did a year ago. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence updated Intelligence Community Directive 705 in late 2025, tightening rules for radio frequency shielding and electromagnetic security in SCIF construction, according to a review by Holland & Knight. Cencore recently opened a new 55,000-square-foot facility in Payson, where the company is based, giving it more room to produce the mobile facilities under the updated standard.
The launch of IWE arrives as Utah leaders continue trying to grow the state's defense and aerospace footprint, and as the industry's dollars remain heavily concentrated among a handful of giants. The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute found that 88%, or $5.2 billion, of Utah's $5.9 billion in fiscal year 2023 defense contracts went to just 10 prime contractors. In fiscal year 2024, Northrop Grumman alone captured 61.1%, or $3.68 billion, of the $6.02 billion in prime defense contract dollars obligated in the state, the institute's research shows.
Defense Dollars and Utah's Broader Push
That concentration underscores why smaller Utah firms have an incentive to band together rather than bid alone. Utah's military and defense sector directly and indirectly supported 173,713 jobs and contributed $22.2 billion to the state's GDP in fiscal year 2023 — 7.8% of the state's total economic output, per the Gardner Institute's findings. Federal defense personnel in Utah earned an average of $102,115 in annual compensation that year, about 31% higher than the statewide average of $77,801 for non-defense jobs.
Fife has been a visible figure in that broader push. He was an original co-founder and Vice Chair of 47G, the state trade association rebranded in October 2023 to build Utah into a national hub for aerospace, defense, and cyber technologies, according to TechBuzz News. The group, whose name references Utah's 1847 pioneer history and test pilot John Stapp's 46.2G acceleration record, now counts more than 100 companies and 20 academic institutions in its network, per the University of Utah's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Much of that ecosystem orbits Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah, the state's largest single-site employer with nearly 27,000 military, civilian, and reserve personnel as of 2025, which anchors the region's dense cluster of aerospace contractors, according to Davis County News. Whether coalition models like IWE can ultimately win major federal Programs of Record against entrenched primes such as Northrop Grumman remains an open question for the industry as Cencore's summit gets underway Friday in Payson.
