Extending the midsummer drought in defense spending into a second week, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded only four new contracts Monday, worth $80.7 million in total. Worse news for investors is that only two of them went to publicly traded companies.
The lucky winners this time:
- Exelis (NYSE: XLS), which won the day's biggest award, $26.7 million to support Launch and Test Range System functions for the Space and Missile Systems Center/PKL in the Eastern and Western space launch ranges, from Aug. 1 through Oct. 31.
- Bell Helicopter Textron (TXT +1.87%), which was awarded a $17.9 million firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to support the U.S. Marine Corps' H-1 upgrade program. This is the program whereby the USMC is switching from a helicopter force composed mainly of AH-1W SuperCobras and UH-1N Twin Hueys to one featuring AH-1Z Vipers and UH-1Y Venoms.
Under the instant contract, Bell will be manufacturing, testing and delivering one each of an H-1 main rotor gearbox test stand and H-1 tail rotor/intermediate gearbox test stand, plus related equipment, and providing logistics, maintenance, and follow-on support, as well as other things needed to facilitate depot level maintenance of these H-1 aircraft rotor assemblies.
