The Navy on Tuesday issued Raytheon a $217 million contract to build 154 Tomahawk missiles for the Navy, Army and Marine Corps, the Defense Department announced.
The contract is to buy a total of 154 Block V Tomahawk missile systems, with 54 systems going to the Marine Corps, 70 to the Navy and 30 to the Army, according to the May 24 Defense of Department contract awards.
Much of the money comes from the Navy’s weapons procurement account and the Marine Corps ammunition account, but some will also come from Army and Navy research and development accounts.
Naval Air Systems Command in a news release said the contract “marks the first multi-service procurement for Tomahawk, which further expands integration into new firing platforms for the Marine Corps and Army.”
According to NAVAIR, the Marine Corps’ Tomahawk will be ground-based and that the service is currently working on a launcher for the missile system.
The missiles “will be in the Block V configuration which features a NAV/COMMS upgrade that maintains the capability for in-flight updates and improved navigation. Future Block V capabilities will include the Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST) variant and the Joint Multiple Effects Warhead System (JMEWS),” NAVAIR said in the news release.
The Navy plans to upgrade its entire Tomahawk arsenal to the Block V configuration, USNI News reported last year. Those plans include retiring the Block III Tomahawks and upgrading the Block IV Tomahawks, the Navy’s program manager for Tomahawk weapons systems told reporters last year. The upgrades to the Block V configuration will extend the range of the missiles.
At the end of 2020, the Navy finished testing the new Block V configuration after launching two of the updated Tomahawks from Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Chafee (DDG-90), NAVAIR said at the time.
The 70 Tomahawks in the contract issued this week are for missiles the Navy is purchasing with Fiscal Year 2022 funding. The service is seeking to buy 23 Tomahawk missile systems in FY 2023, zero in FY 2024, 26 in FY 2025, 58 in FY 2026 and 58 in FY 2027, according to the Pentagon’s most recent five-year spending plan.
