The U.S. Missile Defense Agency exercised a $523 million contract option with Raytheon to produce, test and deliver 47 Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB interceptors for operational testing and deployment.
This is the fiscal year 2016 option under the $2,351,177,872 contract for Standard Missiles awarded to the company in 2015. The guided missiles are used by the U.S. Navy to provide regional defense against short-to-intermediate-range ballistic missile threats.
“Standard Missile-3 plays a critical role in the missile defense of the U.S. and its allies,” said Dr. Taylor W. Lawrence , Raytheon Missile Systems president. “SM-3’s sophisticated capability to destroy enemy ballistic missiles in space, and its flexibility to deploy from land or from sea make it invaluable as the centerpiece of the President’s Phased Adaptive Approach for missile defense in Europe.”
Production under this contract will be completed at Raytheon’s Space Factory in Tucson, Ariz., and integration will take place at Raytheon’s state-of-the-art integration facility in Huntsville, Ala.
SM-3s destroy incoming ballistic missile threats in space using nothing more than sheer impact, which is equivalent to a 10-ton truck traveling at 600 mph.
SM-3 Block IB is deployed at sea, and was deployed ashore in Romania in late 2015 while SM-3 Block IIA is on track for deployment at sea, and ashore in 2018 in Poland.
More than 270 SM-3s have been delivered to date.