On the final day of 2013, the Department of Defense awarded $582.1 million in funding through nine new defense contracts Tuesday. Lockheed Martin (LMT 1.71%) won two of them.
Its bigger win, and the biggest contract won by any defense contractor Tuesday, was a $263.4 million firm-fixed-price foreign military sales contract. This contract instructs Lockheed Martin to supply 14 four-packs of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, and seven launcher modifications kits, to the Kuwaiti military. Delivery is due June 30, 2016. Originally designed as an anti-aircraft missile, the Patriot is probably most famous as an anti-missile missile, having been used as the Army's primary means of shooting down Iraqi "Scud" tactical ballistic missiles during the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991.
Lockheed's smaller contract win, worth $8.3 million, is a contract modification that adds 12 months' duration to an existing foreign military sales contract supporting South Korea's "Peace Krypton Program." The cryptic name refers to a high level surveillance and reconnaissance project, whereby South Korea flies specially equipped Hawker 800 aircraft on long-range missions to capture intelligence via Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery. Lockheed Martin diplomatically, if vaguely, identifies the targets of these surveillance missions as simply "selected areas."
This contract will now run through the end of 2014.
