Jane Edwards 
The Missile Defense Agency has awarded C Speed a position on the potential 10-year, $151 billion Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD, contract.
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The award reflects C Speed’s commitment to delivering advanced domain awareness and integrated sensing capabilities that support the country’s layered defense missions, the company said Wednesday.
C Speed CEO Kevin McLaughlin said the company’s aerial and ground-based radar systems are designed to deliver a decision advantage.
“Our state-of-the-art early warning, threat detection and domain awareness capabilities give decision-makers the critical time they need to assess, respond, and deploy resources to ensure adversarial attacks are deterred and denied before they occur,” added McLaughlin, who assumed the chief executive role in April 2025.
What Is MDA SHIELD?
SHIELD is a flexible contract vehicle that enables MDA and other Department of War entities to rapidly compete for orders and speed up the delivery of capabilities to warfighters.
MDA solicited proposals for the SHIELD indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract in September.
Through SHIELD, MDA intends to develop continuous, layered protection against air, missiles, space, cyber and hybrid threats. The agency also aims to advance the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled applications, model-based systems engineering, open systems architecture, digital engineering and agile processes to speed up the acquisition, development and sustainment of capabilities.
In early December, MDA established the competitive pool by awarding 1,014 companies spots on the SHIELD contract as part of the initial tranche of staggered awards. On Dec. 18, the agency added 1,086 vendors to the competitive pool.
On Jan. 15, MDA expanded the pool to more than 2,400 awardees with the addition of 340 vendors, including C Speed, to the SHIELD IDIQ contract.
What Does C Speed Do?
C Speed is a platform company of NewSpring Holdings focused on providing advanced radar systems and engineering platforms for military and civilian applications. The company’s product portfolio includes the LightWave Radar, a software-defined radar platform designed to support persistent surveillance across an array of airborne and ground-based products and domains.
In December, C Speed partnered with BigBear.ai to deliver an artificial intelligence-enabled threat detection and response platform in support of defense and homeland security missions.
