In December and January, the federal agency put out three lengthy lists of government contractors who will be working on what it calls SHIELD. SHIELD stands for Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, basically a fancy way of saying it’s connected to missile defense.
In an email to KMXT, a spokesperson for the Missile Defense Agency, Ryan Keith, said the SHIELD contracting structure allows the federal government to rapidly order and acquire services that may support Golden Dome under one umbrella over a ten-year period. It plans to spend up to $151 billion on SHIELD.
The state-owned Alaska Aerospace Corporation made it onto the SHIELD contractor list. CEO and President John Oberst said he is confident its future work will support Golden Dome.
Oberst said he can’t say much about what Alaska Aerospace’s work may entail or even the dollar value of that work, pending Missile Defense Agency authorization.
There are 2,439 other contractors on the Missile Defense Agency’s lists – too many for me to exhaustively research on my own. So I asked an AI program to read through the lists and identify businesses with Alaska connections. It came back with some companies that had superficial ties.
For example, they had previously done work in Alaska. And some bad hits, like the privately held Raven Defense Corp. in Albuquerque, New Mexico – the AI thought it was based in Anchorage.
But in its imperfect list, I did independently verify 12 more companies with meaningful Alaska ties, all subsidiaries of Alaska Native corporations connected to communities from Utqiagvik to the Pribilofs to Ketchikan.
That includes:
- Ahtna Logistics LLC, a subsidiary of regional ANC Ahtna Inc.;
- Ahtna Qualis 8(a) JV LLC, another Ahtna subsidiary;
- Aleut Aerospace Engineering LLC, a subsidiary of the regional ANC Aleut Corp.;
- Bowhead Logistics Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corp. in Utqiagvik;
- Cape Fox Federal Integrators LLC, a subsidiary of the Cape Fox Corp. in Ketchikan;
- Chenega Analytic Business Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of the Chenega Corp.;
- Chugach Technical Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of the regional ANC Chugach Alaska Corp. in Anchorage;
- Chugach Dynamic Solutions LLC, another Chugach Alaska subsidiary;
- Chugach Information Technology Inc., another Chugach Alaska subsidiary;
- Chugach Ignite Solutions JV LLC, another Chugach Alaska subsidiary;
- CP Marine LLC, a subsidiary of Goldbelt, Inc., in Juneau; and
- Tanaq Technical Services LLC, a subsidiary of the St. George Tanaq Corporation.
You can see the entire list below, and if you spot other entities with Alaska connections that the AI and I missed, please let the KMXT newsroom know.
