Updated at 3:10 p.m.
The Department of Defense has awarded a contract worth up to $3.1 billion to GlobalFoundries, the company announced Thursday.
The 10-year contract is for securely manufactured semiconductors to be used in the nation’s most sensitive applications, according to a press release from GlobalFoundries, which operates a manufacturing plant in Essex Junction.
GlobalFoundries is the largest for-profit employer in Vermont. More than 2,000 GlobalFoundries employees and 800 contractors work at the Essex Junction plant making chips used in smartphones, automobiles and communications equipment, making it Vermont’s largest private employer, the plant’s general manager, Ken McAvey, said last year. That was before the company announced in December it was laying off 148 people at the plant.
The chips would be used in aerospace and defense applications and would be used on land, in the air, in space and on the sea.
The company stated that the chips will be manufactured at its U.S. facilities accredited to the highest level of security by the Pentagon. A press release from the Defense Department Wednesday said the chips would be manufactured at the Essex Junction plant and at two GlobalFoundries plants in New York state.
Former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) worked to make the Essex Junction plant — or fab, as it is called in the semiconductor industry — the first to be accepted by the U.S. government as a “trusted foundry,” one of a group of semiconductor plants run by commercial companies using procedures to ensure that the chips manufactured there are secure.
A chip manufactured for an F-35 fighter jet at the Essex Junction plant, for example, could not be used by China to take over the aircraft. The federal government created the Trusted Foundry program when it realized that it was cost-prohibitive to produce sensitive chips on a small scale at its own fab.
“For this work, GF is accredited to provide the right level of security required for each program,” said Mike Cadigan, chief lobbyist for GlobalFoundries, in the press release.
The contract was awarded by the Pentagon’s Defense Microelectronics Activity Trusted Access Program Office, the company said.
The Pentagon will award the first $17.3 million payment to GlobalFoundries this month, according to the release.
The contract is the third 10-year contract in a row between the Defense Department and GlobalFoundries’ Trusted Foundry team, the company said.
