The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon [RTN] a $2.3 billion contract on Tuesday for engineering services to support the Patriot missile defense systems to support software and refresh obsolescence in both U.S. and partner international systems.
This hybrid cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price and level-of-effort contract will divide work locations and funding based on individual orders. The total work is expected to be finished by January 2023.
Raytheon clarified that these system upgrades will be funded by the 14 countries that use Patriot for integrated air and missile defense. Those are the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Romania.
The company said it also received an initial $235 million modernization task order from the U.S. Army, the first of five annual indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) task order awards that combined will reach upward of $2.3 billion.
“The 14 Patriot partner nations share the cost of further improving the system through upgrades. As a result, all partner nations will be able to continue outpacing and defeating even the most advanced threats,” Tom Laliberty, Raytheon vice president of Integrated Air and Missile Defense, said in a statement.
The Patriot system includes radars, command and control technology, and interceptors that are aimed at tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other aircraft.
Raytheon said the upgrades will include developing new methods to search, detect, track, discriminate, engage, and defeat a range of threats; bolster Patriot’s ability to counter advanced electromagnetic countermeasures; enhance the system’s ability to conduct combat identification; improve the Patriot interoperability with higher echelon systems; develop advanced training aids like high fidelity virtual simulators; and reduce life cycle costs through reliability improvements and modernized hardware.