On a slow day at the Pentagon's contracting office Friday, Raytheon (RTN) walked away with the biggest contract on offer, by orders of magnitude.
The Department of Defense announced it has awarded Raytheon a $126 million sole-source, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract modification -- which single award made up more than half the value of the $242 million in contracts DoD handed out today. The money will be used to pay upfront for parts and components needed to manufacture 29 Standard Missile-3 Block IB missiles for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
The 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, but this new contract modification will have Raytheon still collecting missile parts through at least Sept. 30, 2016.
