St. Louis Is Emerging As A Virtual Defense Tech Innovation Hub
Written by Dick Fleming | Originally Published in FDI Alliance International, August Interactive Issue 2025
In recent years, industry clusters have become a state of art in successful economic development — these geographical concentrations of related businesses, suppliers, service providers, and specialized institutions (like universities, research centers, and government agencies) have focused on particular industry clusters.
Such proximity fosters a collaborative and competitive environment that drives innovation, enhances productivity, and ultimately strengthens a region’s economy.
These clusters produce goods or services for external markets, injecting new wealth into the local economy. Examples include Silicon Valley’s tech industry, Germany’s automotive cluster, and St. Louis’ now 25-year-old BioBelt Plant and Life Sciences cluster.
Tech hubs and clusters focus on innovation, research, development, and commercialization of advanced technologies — characterized by a vibrant ecosystem of startups, established businesses, researchers, and educators collaborating within specific tech sectors, such as semiconductors, biotechnology, clean energy, and now, a growing focus on defense tech innovation industry clusters.
Elements of Defense Tech Hubs include next-generation national security infrastructure, in which secure data processing, analysis tools, defense contractors, intelligence agencies, and AI-focused national security companies. Such Hubs often include SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) and Data Centers as complementary components of the national security infrastructure.
A vibrant example is the Defense Tech Innovation Hub which has been evolving over the past 10 years in center city St. Louis. The key elements of the St. Louis Defense Tech Hub are:
The soon-to-open $1.75-billion, 712,000 square foot, 97-acre, new western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a federal agency whose mission is central to National Security, Mapping, and Geospatial-Intelligence (GEOINT);
Within several blocks of NGA’s new HQ, the 725,000 square foot Globe Building has become the “location of choice,” both for national Geospatial Intel firms such as General Dynamics, Esri, MAXAR, T-Kartor USA, BAE Systems, and Westway Services — as well as for over 150,000 square feet of hardened, Tier III national/international Data Centers, and a single-floor, 75,000 square foot multi-tenant secure SCIF;
Dubbed the “High Tech Castle,” The Globe includes unique high-speed fiber and redundant and ample power, to accompany its 75,000 square foot already federally-accredited SCIF, which is the largest such entity in the nation outside Washington;
Other key St. Louis regional Defense Contractors include the 3,000-employee Boeing Defense, Space & Security (smart munitions, cruise missiles, and unmanned systems); longtime defense supplier Seiler Instrument & Manufacturing Company (precision optical systems, survey and military mapping instruments); and the global HQ for the 12,000-employee World Wide Technology (has provided IT solutions to the DoD for over 30 years, and has global reach, including cleared resources for federal, DoD, and intelligence community markets. WWT collaborates with other firms in this sector, such as Tanium and Palantir);
The 13,000-employee Scott Air Force Base, home to U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), Air Mobility Command (AMC), and Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) — constituting a critical Global Logistics, Cyber, and Mobility Hub;
The Taylor Geospatial Institute (TGI), the 3-year-old first-of-its-kind entity in the Geospatial field — designed to fuel research, collaboration, and impact. With a legacy investment by philanthropist Andrew C. Taylor and the commitment and engagement of 8 major academic and research institutions led by St. Louis University, TGI is the cornerstone of establishing a Global Center for Geospatial Excellence in St. Louis.
In addition to the Taylor Geospatial Institute, individual higher education institutions — Washington University at St. Louis, St. Louis University, Harris-Stowe University, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and Lindenwood University — each have core Geospatial research and education, and talent pipeline programs.
Workforce and Talent Development assets include Gateway Global American Youth and Education Empowerment Center to national leaders in credentialing and training youth in Geospatial Intelligence and Cybersecurity; and
The T-Rex Geospatial Incubator, which also includes NGA’s Moonshot Labs.
Former NGA Director, now Board Chair of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) and the Taylor Geospatial Institute, Robert Cardillo, spoke to the NGA’s unique technology advantages and capabilities: “The new NGA St. Louis campus will be a first-of-its-kind in the U.S. intelligence community.”
Accompanying the substantial recent appropriation increase in federal defense spending, U.S. Senators Eric Schmitt (R, Missouri) and John Hickenlooper (D, Colorado) are the lead bipartisan co-sponsors of legislation to spur Defense Innovation and Investment across 10 regions, such as Missouri and Colorado, to modernize the nation’s defense innovation base, and stimulate good-paying jobs.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R, Missouri) noted that “Missouri is serving as a key model for this program,” concluding that he seeks “to establish St. Louis as the primary hub for defense technology in the nation.”
The federal initiative would authorize $375-million per year from 2026 to 2030, to establish and grow 10 regional DoD Tech Hubs to advance defense technologies critical to national security.Among key criteria for eligibility is the “presence of anchor Federal defense institutions that particularly in geospatial intelligence, data fusion, and AI.”
The Defense Tech Hubs initiative would also reinforce federal policy to decentralize U.S. intelligence facilities to regions throughout the country. On this issue, Robert Cardillo commented, “St. Louis has proudly responded to the national security demand signal for more than 200 years — from the Lewis and Clark Age of Discovery to the new NGA campus — St. Louis continues to step up and deliver in ways that could not (and should not) be done from D.C.”
Federal contracting to private sector firms to fulfill governmental missions have become what economist and founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University Bruce Katz calls “The Procurement Economy.”
Katz notes in a June 2025 The New Localism report, “the federal government has enormous purchasing power and uses it to drive innovation and make markets; because of this, the federal government — when serving as a buyer — acts as a proxy for the next economy.”
The recently-passed Department of Defense budget for Fiscal Year 2026 includes significant funding related to Artificial Intelligence and Space Programs, which encompasses Geospatial Intelligence procurement initiatives.
The overall procurement budget for FY 2026 is $125 billion (a dedicated budget line of $13.4 billion has been established for Autonomy and AI Systems), NGA Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth has already announced a Data Labeling RFP estimated to be over $700 million, including NGA’s Maven AI Program.
Given these federal resources and this existing Defense Tech Hub infrastructure, St. Louis is well positioned to compete for its share of the growing DoD Procurement investments over the next 5 years and beyond.
National GEOINT leader and investor (and decade-long previous CEO of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation) Keith Masback observed in a St. Louis Business Journal column, “I’m bullish on the city and the ambitious path upon which it’s embarked to become both a national and global hub for geospatial intelligence,” concluding, “the presence of this community SCIF, along with the new NGA campus and the Downtown North Insight District, positions St. Louis as the leading contender in attracting geospatial intelligence and related industries.”
It is in this context that Defense Tech Innovation Hub assets developed (and continuing to develop) over the past 10 years — NGA’s new $1.75-billion HQ, the ‘High Tech Castle’ at The Globe Building, the largest multi-tenant SCIF outside Washington, the Taylor Geospatial Institute and related academic research and training institutions, the growing GEOINT and Defense ecosystem, the presence of leading defense contractors — all combine to position St. Louis to fulfill the aspirations articulated by Senator Eric Schmitt, for St. Louis to ‘become the primary hub for defense technology in the nation.’
