The Department of Defense announced 10 new defense contracts Monday, worth $392 million in aggregate. The majority of these awards went to privately held defense contractors providing services such as channel dredging, third-party logistics support, and aircraft refueling services. But publicly traded defense contractors won a few contracts as well.
C.R. Bard (BCR) was awarded the second (out of seven possible) one-year option period exercise on a one-year base fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $46.3 million. Bard will supply the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and federal civilian agencies with medical and surgical supplies through at least Dec. 5, 2014.
Austal USA, the Australian shipbuilder partnered with General Dynamics (GD -0.17%) in building one of two variants of the Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, was awarded an $8.2 million option exercise on a contract to assess engineering and production challenges likely to result from efforts to reduce the acquisition and lifecycle costs of the new U.S. Navy LCS class of ships. Austal's contract will now run through next November.
Also, the Pentagon issued a clarification related to its announcement of a contract that was awarded to AAR's (AIR 1.26%) Airlift Group on Wednesday. At the time of its announcement, this contract -- an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, fixed-price with economic price adjustment contract to provide dedicated fixed-wing aircraft transport services in the Central Africa Region, including Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan, from Dec. 28 of this year to Oct. 27, 2015 -- did not have a value assigned to it. The Pentagon now says that AAR's contract will be worth $22.7 million.
