Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems, Littleton, Colorado, has received an $88,560,319 cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to produce, install, and sustain Radiant Mercury General Service Cross Domain Solution systems for the Department of the Navy and other government customers, the Pentagon announced October 26, 2026. Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific in San Diego awarded the sole-source deal under contract N66001-27-D-0006, with a three-year ordering period running from October 20, 2026, through October 19, 2029.
The Radiant Mercury contract creates a second vehicle for a system Lockheed Martin developed for the Navy in 1992, which remains the service’s designated cross domain solution, or CDS, for moving data between networks at different classification levels. Within the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (PEO C4I), the Cybersecurity Program Office, PMW 130, acts as executive agent for Radiant Mercury across the Defense Department and the intelligence community, according to Navy program documentation. The existing vehicle, N00039-19-D-0006, remains active through September 30, 2029, and has already absorbed two ceiling increases.
Radiant Mercury Contract Scope Adds Production to Sustainment Work
The new instrument covers production, installation, program management, maintenance, modernization, and sustainment, plus system security authorization support, logistics, and training. The Navy guarantees only $50,000 in orders; the $88,560,319 figure is a ceiling, not obligated funding. Task orders will set requirements, places and periods of performance, and funding, with each order paid from appropriations held by the requesting activity.
The scope differs from the August 2019 vehicle on two points. That contract, valued at $44,308,222 at award and $92,213,609 with its five-year option, listed installation, program management, maintenance, modernization, and sustainment, but not production. It also combined cost-plus-fixed-fee and firm-fixed-price line items, while the new award is purely cost-plus-fixed-fee.
Demand under the 2019 vehicle has repeatedly outrun its estimate. A $12,028,735 modification in February 2025 raised its value to $104,242,344, and a $30 million modification on April 17, 2026, lifted it to $134,242,344 without extending its period of performance. The Navy justified the new award under 10 U.S. Code 3204(a)(1) and Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1, the only one responsible source exception. That statute is the recodified form of the 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) authority cited for the 2019 award.
How Radiant Mercury Guards Classified Data Across Security Domains
Radiant Mercury is a transfer-type CDS: it inspects, filters, sanitizes, and passes data between networks at different classification levels rather than giving a single user simultaneous access to several domains. The General Service, or GENSER, designation ties this contract to collateral classified networks rather than Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) systems.
Lockheed Martin has described the system as handling simultaneous data flows across hundreds of channels while interfacing with most major command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and most transport, network, and data link protocols. A 2010 company release cited processing of hundreds of data formats at up to 10 times the speed of earlier versions, and by 2015 Lockheed Martin was fielding the fourth generation. Company figures from that period put the installed base at more than 400 sites across US and allied networks; the 2009 support contract alone covered 483 systems. Current fleet totals have not been published.
The system is embedded in platforms, not only shore enclaves. A Naval Air Systems Command sole-source notice plans approximately 91 CDS-Radiant Mercury hardware units, built by Crystal Group, for the P-8A Poseidon: 80 US Navy production aircraft and labs, three flight test aircraft, and eight Royal Australian Air Force aircraft. That configuration is the only one approved by Defense Department cross domain authorization boards for installation on the aircraft.
Raise the Bar Compliance Shapes the Navy’s Cross Domain Baseline
Under Department of Defense Instruction 8540.01, any CDS connected to a Defense Department classified network must appear on the baseline list maintained by the National Security Agency’s National Cross Domain Strategy and Management Office (NCDSMO). NCDSMO’s Raise the Bar requirements, which govern CDS design, assessment, and deployment, are revised annually to address new threats and discovered vulnerabilities. PMW 130 lists Raise the Bar compliance among its cross domain lines of effort, alongside the Joint Cross Domain eXchange and multilevel security platforms.
That annual cadence explains why modernization and security authorization support recur across Radiant Mercury vehicles. A cross domain guard does not stay accredited by standing still; each revision can trigger software changes, re-testing, and re-authorization at fielded sites. The Navy has not disclosed which Radiant Mercury release task orders will field, or whether installed systems will migrate to a newer baseline under this contract.
Accreditation also anchors the sole-source rationale. Alternatives exist on the baseline list, including the government-developed X-domain Agile Rules-Based Information Transfer OrchestratoR (X-ARBITOR) from the Air Force Research Laboratory, accepted for Top Secret/SCI and below and Secret and below deployments. Displacing Radiant Mercury, however, would require re-authorizing every site and platform integration that depends on it.
Analysis: Measured by ceiling, Navy demand for Radiant Mercury support has more than doubled. The 2019 vehicle, even after two increases, averages roughly $13 million a year over its decade-long life; the new ceiling equates to about $29.5 million a year across a three-year window, and both instruments will run concurrently into 2029. Ceilings are not obligations, but the trend points to a growing cross domain workload as sensor, command and control, and coalition data increasingly cross classification boundaries. It also deepens dependence on a single vendor for a function now resident on aircraft, ships, and shore sites.
The first task orders under the new Radiant Mercury contract, N66001-27-D-0006, will show which customers, platforms, and locations the Navy is funding, details absent from the award notice. The Navy must also address the September 30, 2029, expiry of the 2019 vehicle, less than three weeks before the new ordering period closes. Whether that produces a consolidated follow-on or another sole-source justification will indicate whether any rival guard can realistically break into the Navy’s cross domain market.