The Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon Company an undefinitized contract action for a fiscal year 2015 contract valued at $559,206,957 million for Standard Missile-3 Block IBs, which are guided missiles used by the U.S. Navy to provide regional defense against short – to intermediate -range ballistic missile threats.
Under this contract action, which was announced April 30 by the Department of Defense, Raytheon will deliver an initial quantity of 44 Standard Missile-3 Block IB all-up rounds and provide the work required to produce and deliver the third stage rocket motor reliability growth and design enhancements. The government intends to purchase additional missiles up to a total quantity of 52.
Final assembly of the SM-3 Block IB takes place at Raytheon’s state-of-the-art SM-6 and SM-3 all-up-round production facility at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.
Deployed at sea for the first time in 2014, the SM-3 Block IB is on track for land-based deployment in Romania this year in line with the second phase of the Phased Adaptive Approach, the U.S.’s plan for missile defense in Europe.
About the Standard Missile-3
SM-3s destroy incoming ballistic missile threats in space using nothing more than sheer impact, which is equivalent to a 10-ton truck traveling at 600 mph.
•More than 200 SM-3s have been delivered to the U.S. and Japan to date.
•SM-3 Block IB will be deployed ashore in 2015 in Romania.
•SM-3 Block IIA is on track for deployment at sea and ashore in 2018 in Poland