The US Naval Research Laboratory has handed Riptide Technology a $27.7M contract to help stitch space and ground systems into a single Navy command-and-control picture.
Riptide, based in Alexandria, Virginia, won the cost-plus-fixed-fee award for C4ISR research covering integrated operational space and ground systems. Options could push the total to $148.3M, and work runs at NRL in Washington through August 2031. The lab obligated $2.5M in fiscal 2026 research funding at award time.
The competition was a small-business set-aside with five offers through the government’s SAM.gov portal, under contract N0017326C2426.
The effort centers on systems engineering, analysis and visualization for space-based communications and sensor networks. The company specializes in maritime domain awareness, building its products from global ship-movement feeds that cover ports and transit routes.
For the Navy, the link between orbital sensors and maritime picture-building keeps growing, as space-based RF and ship-tracking data increasingly feed the same awareness picture the service uses for vessel monitoring and threat detection.
