Lockheed Martin gets $174.9M Navy contract for anti-ship missile support

July 5 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin's $174.9 million contract with the U.S. Navy calls for updating components of the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile system.

The contract, announced by the Defense Department on Wednesday, is an order relating to a previously issued basic ordering agreement. It specifies engineering, testing, product support and ancillary support to update the current LRASM components and systems.

The system involves a long-range, precision-guided anti-ship missile. Armed with a penetrator and blast fragmentation warhead, it employs precision routing and guidance, in all weather conditions. It includes a multimodal sensor suite, weapon data link and enhanced digital anti-jam GPS to detect and destroy specific targets within a group of numerous ships at sea. Integration efforts onto F/A-18E/F fighter planes have begun.

The contract with Lockheed Martin is part of a planned Quick Reaction Assessment of the Navy's Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 1 program for use of weapons on the F/A-18E/F aircraft, planned for Fiscal Year 2019.

The majority of the work will be performed at Lockheed Martin facilities in Orlando, Fla., Wayne, N.J., and Nashua, N.H., with an expected completion date of November 2022. The Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting agent.