Miss. wins $27 million in defense contracts

A recently awarded defense contract with the U.S. Army will bring more than $27 million to the state of Mississippi.

Wednesday, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) announced that a “U.S. Army contract will accelerate Department of Defense high performance computing capabilities will involve significant participation from the Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg and the Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Center at Stennis Space Center.”

Cochran, chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, indicated that $27.2 million of an $82.7 million contract will be performed at ERDC and Stennis.

“This is an important award for our state,” Cochran said in a news release. “This investment is a vote of confidence in the quality of research and development conducted in Mississippi, including advanced computing capabilities that save lives and money by keeping our warfighters ahead of our adversaries.”

“I’m pleased that the ERDC and Stennis employees and communities have proven to be smart places to invest taxpayer dollars for the most intensive modeling and simulation missions of the Department of Defense,” he said.

ERDC is expected to receive $14,721,474 of the funding, while Stennis Space Center will receive $12,561,663.

ERDC is also tasked with providing overall management and technical support necessary to advance the Department’s high performance computing capabilities throughout the nation, the release said.

The estimated completion date for the contract work is June 2016.

While Mississippi sites were the largest total funding recipients, the Army announced that Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and sites in Virginia and Maryland would also receive funding to carry out additional supercomputing research.

Contact Sarah Fowler at (601) 961-7303 or sfowler@gannett.com. Follow @Fowler on Twitter.