Over just the past two in-sequester days, the Pentagon has awarded a total of 42 separate contracts to various contractors, worth well over $4 billion in aggregate.
Among many beneficiaries, Raytheon (RTN) won a pair of contracts in as many days. The smaller of the two awards, for $12.1 million, involves a contract modification paying Raytheon to design "digital signatures" for "critical information exchanges and proof [of] message origin" for the Air Force. Work is expected to be complete by Feb. 28, 2015.
The more important contract comes to Raytheon through the nation's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and modifies an existing contract to perform in-service engineering support for Standard Missile-3 Block IB.
SM-3IB is a new version of Raytheon's venerable Standard surface-to-air missile, which aims to enhance the original's effectiveness with enhanced, two-color infrared target seeking, and the use of short bursts of precision propulsion to steer the missile toward incoming targets. The SM-3IB is scheduled to begin deployment in 2015, and this contract runs through Sept. 30, 2015. Raytheon has received contract awards of $594.4 million on this contract. This week's $62.3 million award lifts the total to $656.7 million.
