Navy exercises contract option for Zumwalt-class logistics, engineering

Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Raytheon has been awarded a $34 million modification to a previous contract by the U.S. Navy for integrated logistics support and engineering services on DDG 1000-class ships.

The modification, announced Wednesday by the Defense Department, exercises an option for Raytheon to provide services to the Zumwalt-class destroyer.

The first in class USS Zumwalt was commissioned in 2013, and is described by the Navy as a "multi-mission surface combatant designed to fulfill volume firepower and precision strike requirements."

The combat system for the Zumwalt-class delivers distributed, heavy firepower during long-range precision strikes to support forces ashore. The system also provides reduction, active and passive self-defense system and enhanced survivability features.

Raytheon's technology supplies the Zumwalt-class with a total ship computing environment, a network that powers all the shipboard applications, including its radars and weapons systems. The ship uses a MK57 vertical launching system to fire missiles for sea, land and air attacks.

The Navy has obligated $9 million at the time of the award from the Navy's fiscal 2018 shipbuilding and conversion funds, fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance and fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation, with $3.5 million of which expiring at the end of the fiscal year.

Work on the contract --which will take place in California, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island -- is expected to be completed in September 2019.