Breaking Defense:
WASHINGTON: Raytheon is hoping to wrap up several multi-year contracts for the Standard Missile 6 and SM-3 Block IB interceptors in the coming weeks, deals that would give the industrial base some stability and lock in production pipelines for missile interceptors at a critical time as North Korea and Iran test new medium-range ballistic missiles.
Forging a multi-year deal “allows us to do strategic planning beyond this effort in a different way than we had before,” said Mitch Stevison, vice president of Raytheon’s Strategic and Naval Systems segment. “It also allows us to look deeper at the next evolution to more efficiently spend our internal research and development dollars to develop new capabilities” not available under year-to-year contracts.