Southwest Research Institute

Southwest Research Institute, a San Antonio-based nonprofit research and development organization doing business as S W R I, delivers applied research, engineering services, materials science, testing and analysis, and scientific investigations to federal agencies as a prime contractor (96% of recent awards) and subcontractor, competing without SBA set-aside designations across full-and-open federal procurements spanning defense, space, energy, environmental compliance, and civilian research domains. With over 2,700 staff members and a portfolio exceeding 7,000 federal awards valued at $133.7 billion combined potential across both contracts and grants, SwRI operates from San Antonio headquarters with subsidiary operations including Signature Science LLC.

SwRI's customer concentration reflects balanced exposure across defense and civilian agencies. The top five customer agencies by award count account for 46% of recent awards: the Department of the Air Force leads with 1,064 awards ($982.4 million potential value), followed by NASA's Shared Services Center (873 awards, $269.3 million), the Department of the Army (573 awards), the Department of the Navy (435 awards), and NASA proper (314 awards). By potential value, the rankings shift toward large dollar programs: the Naval Sea Systems Command anchors the portfolio with $11.07 billion combined potential across 127 awards, NASA's Goddard Space Center carries $7 billion across 126 awards, the Air Force Materiel Command Ogden Air Logistics Complex holds $1.11 billion across 75 awards, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency commands $697.4 million across 49 awards. This divergence signals heavy concentration in large-dollar defense platforms and space science missions against broad task-order activity across smaller civilian purchases.

Capability framing grounds in concrete work: SwRI designs and manufactures aerospace defense hardware including antenna systems, F-16 structural integrity components, and miniature multiple threat emitter systems; performs advanced materials testing, radiochemical analysis, and environmental compliance testing; develops space instruments and participates in NASA heliophysics missions including the Solar Orbiter suprathermal ion spectrograph ($3.58 million, NASA Goddard Space Center); supports aircraft structural life extension through the Center for Aircraft Structural Life Extension (CASTLE) program across multiple Air Force platforms; provides systems engineering and test engineering for emerging technologies including artificial intelligence applications, additive manufacturing qualification, and advanced propulsion systems. Recent representative prime work includes a $456.4 million delivery order from Pacific Air Forces under the Information Analysis Center Multiple-Award Contract for rapid development and demonstration of emerging technology; a $60 million cost-plus-fixed-fee definitive contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration for the HYPERION program spanning research and development and operations maintenance services through July 2036; a $36.17 million delivery order from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for SUNSPEAR II agent defeat and emerging threat testing through June 2030; a $17.9 million Office of Naval Research definitive contract for ship-board battery containment design and test validation; and recurring NASA Science Mission Directorate project grants in the $160,000–$1 million range supporting balanced science programs in planetary science, heliophysics, and Earth science.

SwRI holds multiple large indefinite delivery vehicles anchoring its contract posture. The Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) IDIQ with the Missile Defense Agency carries a $151 billion ceiling through December 2035 and represents a multi-domain defense system procurement vehicle for research, development, prototyping, and production. The Automatic Test Systems Acquisition-I (ATSA-I) vehicle with Air Force Materiel Command carries $980 million for automatic test equipment lifecycle support through September 2035. SwRI also maintains single-award IDIQs with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center supporting system and material degradation engineering and research; a $9.6 million Testing and Rapid Prototyping for Interoperable Automation Safety (TRPIAS) IDIQ with the Department of Transportation; a $9.99 million F-16 RFC/SIU production hardware IDIQ with the Ogden Air Logistics Complex; a $3 million Naval Facilities Engineering Command "Super Dialer" IDIQ; and multiple GSA and agency multiple-award schedules. SwRI seats on OASIS+ Unrestricted and related government-wide acquisition contract vehicles enabling task-order procurement across federal civilian and defense agencies.

Activity has remained steady: 172 awards in 2022, rising to 210 in 2024, then moderating to 177 in 2025 and 77 in the partial 2026 coverage (reflecting incomplete-year data). The vendor faces $1.22 billion in combined potential value across 223 awards with ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months, representing recompete exposure on established platforms and sustained customer relationships.

SwRI operates predominantly as a prime (96% of awards, 6,717 of 7,014 total), with modest subcontractor activity (4% of awards, 297 of 7,014). Across SCI-reportable federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold, the vendor invoiced $181.4 million over FY2022–FY2025 ($49.4 million in FY2025), delivering roughly 69.8 FTEs of direct and subcontracted labor to the federal government in FY2025. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable primes run a median of $252.17/hr, with junior labor near $30/hr and senior technical staff pricing through $436.52/hr. Across SCI prime contracts, subcontractors account for an average of 3% of total contractor hours, reflecting SwRI's reliance on its own delivery teams; the vendor names 65 distinct subcontractors across its prime portfolio, including universities (University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, The Trustees of Princeton University), specialized manufacturers (Resion LLC, Hughes Circuits Inc., Avnet Inc., Green Hills Software LLC), and government-operated research facilities (Triad National Security for Los Alamos, UT-Battelle for Oak Ridge).

SwRI's grant footprint spans NASA Science Mission Directorate (recurring project grants ranging $142,000–$999,000 supporting balanced science programs in heliophysics, planetary science, and lunar exploration under CFDA 43.001), the National Science Foundation (including a $399,696 collaborative research award for the 2024 total solar eclipse experiment and a $119,864 award for the AMPERE-4 magnetospheric research infrastructure under CFDA 47.049 and 47.050), the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (a $1.45 million cooperative agreement for dual-media thermal energy storage development under CFDA 81.087), and defense agencies including DARPA (Phase I $6.17 million award for the SURGE additive manufacturing program) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a $49.7 million multiple-award IDIQ for chemistry, manufacturing, and controls services). SwRI acts as prime grantee on all named grants and cooperative agreements; sub-award relationships are embedded through university and research institute collaborators under NASA and NSF programs, with named sub-recipients including Stanford University, University of Colorado, Johns Hopkins University, and the Planetary Science Institute providing co-investigator services, data analysis, modeling, and complementary research support.

NAICS concentration reflects SwRI's engineering and R&D posture: Engineering Services (541330, 662 awards), Research and Development in Physical Engineering and Life Sciences (541710/541715, 252 and 156 awards), All Other Professional Scientific and Technical Services (541990, 232 awards), and Testing Laboratories and Services (541380, 212 awards). PSC concentration mirrors this: Support–Professional Engineering/Technical (615 awards), R&D–Space Science Applications Basic Research (536 awards), and General Science and Technology R&D (217 awards).