Enlighten Wins $333 Million Air Force Integrated Defensive Cyber System (IDCS) Contract

Enlighten IT Consulting LLC of Columbia, Maryland, has won a $332.8 million firm-fixed-price Air Force contract to provide enterprise data services for the Integrated Defensive Cyber System (IDCS). The work is intended to make edge analytics, storage and data transport interoperable with the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture’s Common Runtime Stack for Data. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center awarded the contract on Sept. 30, 2026, following a competition that drew seven offers. Work will take place within and outside the continental United States and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2032.

Integrated Defensive Cyber System Details

Enlighten will provide the enterprise service solution that connects data capabilities at the edge with the broader IDCS architecture. A related Air Force planning document for the Enterprise Logging Ingest and Cyber Situational Awareness Refinery (ELICSAR) describes the technical environment: a cloud-based big-data platform for enterprise storage and analytics that must exchange data with Lower Echelon Analytic Platform–Tactical capabilities. The document identifies unclassified, Secret and Top Secret operating domains.

The ELICSAR market-research notice also outlines work to sustain and enhance the existing platform and develop a data fabric for ingesting, storing, analyzing and transporting information across classification domains. It describes integrating IONIC, an analysis toolset for querying, visualization and collaboration, as part of a move toward more cloud-native computing and storage.

That planning document calls for moving data feeds from legacy Logstash collectors and SIPRNet Apache NiFi forwarders to a centrally controlled ELX transport layer under IDCS. It also identifies Apache NiFi for data flows and N8N-based graphical interfaces to make ELICSAR configuration changes easier. Those details describe the Air Force’s related technical plans; the award notice identifies interoperability and enterprise data services as the purpose of Enlighten’s contract.

Integrated Defensive Cyber System Background

IDCS is an Air Force effort to bring defensive-cyber capabilities and data from multiple systems into a common architecture spanning enterprise and tactical environments. An Air Force Life Cycle Management Center acquisition briefing described a shift from sustaining legacy capabilities toward fielding new tools to improve cyber situational awareness and address gaps in sensor data. More recent Department of the Air Force CIO planning slides describe integrating existing cyber capabilities through rapid software development. Enlighten’s award addresses the data-interoperability portion of that broader architecture.

Award and Contractor Background

The Air Force made the award through a Commercial Solutions Opening conducted via the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace. Seven offers were received, and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, is the contracting activity.

Enlighten has performed closely related Air Force data-platform work. A $92.9 million ELICSAR contract, with a potential performance end in July 2026, covered development and sustainment of cloud-based enterprise storage and analytics capabilities. An earlier $98.9 million ELICSAR contract had a potential performance end in March 2024. Enlighten also holds an $11.5 million IDCS data-fabric contract, with a potential performance end in July 2026, focused on interoperability between enterprise and tactical environments. These awards establish the company’s experience with the platforms and architecture named in the new contract.

This award was disclosed by the DoW in its daily press release. Additional contract details will be available on HigherGov in approximately 90 days under FA830726CB015 after the contract is formally disclosed by the government.