The Department of Defense awarded eight defense contracts on Friday, worth $151.4 million combined. Only three publicly traded firms landed contracts:
- Express Scripts (ESRX) won a $33.8 million requirements-type contract with fixed-unit prices to provide pharmacy benefit management services to the Department of Defense's TRICARE pharmacy program. The TRICARE Pharmacy Benefits Program offers pharmacy services in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands through direct care pharmacy services at Military Treatment Facilities; retail network pharmacies; authorized retail non-network pharmacies; and through the TRICARE Home Delivery/Mail Order Pharmacy. This contract may be even bigger than it sounds, though, perhaps topping $5 billion, as the Pentagon noted in its announcement: "The total cumulative face value of the contract, including the one year base period and seven one-year option periods, if exercised, for pharmacy benefit management services, and options for contract phase-out, is estimated at $5,364,684,318."
- Lockheed Martin (LMT -0.01%) won a $24.4 million contract to install a vehicle and dismounted exploitation radar (VADER) system and an aerial precision geolocation kit on a U.S. Army King Air 350ER aircraft. (King Air is now part of defense contractor Textron.) The estimated completion date on Lockheed Martin's new contract is March 18, 2015.
- General Dynamics (GD -4.47%) was awarded a $9.2 million contract modification to supply the U.S. Navy with improved mechanical remote fuze disassembly kits (I-MRFDK ) and spare parts, and to provide training and system maintenance services on the kits, as well. I-MRFDK is a portable system used by explosive ordnance disposal technicians to render ordnance inert and to safely disassemble it. Delivery of these kits is due September 2015.
