Arcata Associates Inc.

Arcata Associates Inc., an Asian-Pacific American minority-owned for-profit corporation headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, operates primarily as a defense prime contractor under full-and-open competition, with a recent pivot into classified air and missile defense work. The company achieved its first prime contract award at the Missile Defense Agency on December 29, 2025 — a multiple-award Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract under the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program with a $151 billion ceiling and an ultimate completion date of December 28, 2035. Prior to the SHIELD award, Arcata operated almost exclusively as a subcontractor to larger defense integrators, delivering engineering support and research facilities operations to the Department of the Air Force and NASA.

Arcata's customer footprint is heavily concentrated in the Air Force (123 awards, 56% of all awards) and NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (16 awards, $225.5 million combined potential value, 97% of the vendor's combined potential value across all customers). The top five customer agencies account for 80% of award volume. This concentration reflects Arcata's historical role supporting Air Force test ranges, research facilities, and aeronautical engineering operations. NASA Armstrong alone dominates the potential-value ranking by a substantial margin, while the Air Force leads by volume; the Missile Defense Agency's recent SHIELD contract ($500 initial delivery order) marks Arcata's entry into the classified missile defense acquisition space. The vendor serves 16 distinct federal agencies across recent and historical awards.

Arcata's award activity shows acceleration in the past three years — two awards annually in 2023, eight in 2024, seven in 2025, and six recorded in 2026 — with an active pipeline of 219 total awards (prime and sub combined) carrying $233.2 million in combined potential value. The vendor's obligated dollars ($388.9 million) exceed the combined potential value, indicating that some awards have been fully funded or over-obligated during execution. The top parent vehicles are Air Force IDIQs: Indefinite Delivery Contract F2660081C0060 (23 task orders), Indefinite Delivery Contract DAAG0881C0119 (11 task orders from the Army), Basic Ordering Agreement F0460684C0241 (11 task orders), and Indefinite Delivery Contract F2660086C0004 (4 task orders). Arcata also holds a seat on NASA's Indefinite Delivery Contract 80GSFC20D0001 (3 task orders).

Arcata's capability portfolio, as evidenced by award descriptions and category concentration, centers on research facilities management, aeronautical test range operations and engineering (notably the Dryden Aeronautical Test Range at NASA Armstrong), simulation laboratory support, center-wide IT services, program analysis and control, and engineering support services under the Research Facilities and Engineering Support Services (RF&ESS) vehicle. Recent work includes multi-year subcontract performance for Asrc Federal System Solutions LLC on RF&ESS facilities operations (six sub-awards issued between January and August 2026), program analysis and control support to NASA and the Air Force, and interim operations and maintenance support to TDX International on the Alaska Range Combat Training Integrated Communications and Support (ARCTICS) program. Teledyne Brown Engineering's Marshall Operations Systems, Services, and Integration II (MOSSI II) contract also carried a subcontract award to Arcata for engineering services.

The vendor operates predominantly as a subcontractor across its historical footprint — 10% of awards are primes, 90% are subs — though the SHIELD award signals a strategic shift toward prime positioning in classified defense work. Service Contract Inventory data captures only Arcata's subcontractor role across 9 SCI records from FY2022 through FY2025, showing a stable workforce of 220–245 FTEs delivered on sub-awards. SCI figures represent a bounded view of the vendor's federal services work and exclude the vendor's goods, classified contracts, and the recently awarded SHIELD prime contract. The vendor subcontracts primarily to Asrc Federal System Solutions LLC and, more recently, to defense primes pursuing NASA and Air Force work, positioning Arcata as a feeder of specialized engineering and facilities operations labor to tier-one contractors.

ENGINEERING, O&M, SETA, RADAR, AIRCREW TRAINING, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, NETWORKS, SATELLITE, FACILITIES, SPECIALIZED INSTRUMENTATION, SYSTEMS INTEGRATION, TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION, SYSTEMS ENGINEERING THEATRICAL MOTION CONTROL