Army awards $676M contracts for weapon system

The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon a $676 million contract to continue manufacturing the TOW weapon system, which provides heavy anti-tank guided missile capability, RTX, the Arlington County parent company of Raytheon, a defense contractor, announced Wednesday. 

Two separate awards consist of a $430 million contract for FY 2023 and an additional $246 million contract for 2024. Work for the awards will take place in Tucson, Arizona. 

Raytheon has delivered more than 700,000 of these weapon systems — which include the TOW 2A, TOW 2B and TOW Bunker Buster missiles — to U.S. and international armed forces, according to a news release, which also noted the U.S. Department of Defense has provided Ukraine with approximately 13,000 TOW missiles. The TOW weapon system will be in service with the U.S. and allied forces beyond 2050, according to RTX. 

Recent upgrades to TOW’s design includes updated fuzing and target detection.  TOW weapon systems are compatible with manned and unmanned vehicles, including the U.S. Army High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the Stryker Anti-Tank Guided Missile Vehicles and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

“Our TOW production line is active, and we can manufacture up to 10,000 missiles annually,” Tom Laliberty, president of land and air defense systems at Raytheon, stated in the release. “This combat-proven effector is ready to meet current and future anti-tank guided missile requirements for the U.S. Army, Marines Corps and land forces across the globe.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Raytheon has agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve multiple allegations that include fraud and bribing a Qatari official.

With more than 185,000 employees globally, RTX reported $68.9 billion in sales in 2023.