May 17 (UPI) -- Raytheon is being awarded $26.8 million contract for the engineering and support of the MK-31 Rolling Airframe Missile, or RAM. The contract is part of a joint cooperative development and production program between the United States and Germany under a memorandum of understanding.
The program is meant to test reliability, along with maintenance, logistics, and software issues. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and Louisville, Ky. The project is expected to be completed by September 2018.
The contract, announced by the Department of Defense on Tuesday, $727,000 obligated from Fiscal 2017 funding for research and evaluation, and will not expire with this fiscal year. The contracting authority is the Naval Sea Systems based out of Washington, D.C.
The MK-31 Rolling Airframe Missile is designed for point-defense against anti-ship missiles. It uses passive radio frequency and infrared guidance systems to track and destroy targets.
It is designed to be deployed on ships of any size, and is used by more than 165 ships in 8 different countries.
