Washington: The US military, scrambling to rebuild depleted stocks of high-tech weaponry, on August 17 said it had awarded RTX unit Raytheon a $22.9 billion contract to dramatically boost the output of Tomahawk missiles.
The US has supplied large amounts of arms to allies while also using munitions in the Iran conflict, raising concerns about inventories of air defence and precision-guided weapons.
“We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an X post. “This landmark Tomahawk contract ensures our warfighters continue to have the lethal firepower they need.”
In a separate statement, Raytheon said the contract would run for seven years and would allow annual Tomahawk production to increase to more than 1,000 missiles. The company currently makes just 60 a year.
The sea-launched Tomahawk, a mainstay of the Navy’s surface fleet, provides long-range precision strike capability against land targets from ships and submarines.
The formal announcement firms up a framework agreement that the US military and Raytheon signed in February. The administration of President Donald Trump is brokering multi-year deals with the biggest US defence contractors, giving the companies confidence to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and equipment.
Earlier this month, the military signed deals to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts.
