The U.S. Department of Defense on June 20 announced that Raytheon Missiles and Defense, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a $1,151,111,454 firm-fixed-price contract for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) Production Lot 37. This contract provides for the production of AMRAAM missiles, AMRAAM Telemetry System, initial and field spares, and other production engineering support activities. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed by January 31, 2027.

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F-22A Raptor armed with four GBU-39s and one AIM-120 AMRAAM (Picture source: Wikipedia/U.S. Government)

This contract involves unclassified Foreign Military Sales to Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, which accounts for approximately 39% of the contract value.

Fiscal 2022 Navy weapons procurement funds in the amount of $4,247,188; fiscal 2023 Navy weapons procurement funds in the amount of $327,619,474; fiscal 2021 Air Force missile procurement funds in the amount of $1,036,912; fiscal 2022 Air Force missile procurement funds in the amount of $8,130,619; fiscal 2023 Air Force missile procurement funds in the amount of $341,951,355; fiscal 2022 Air Force research and development funds in the amount of $1,425,469; fiscal 2023 Air Force research and development funds in the amount of $8,563,391; fiscal 2022 Navy research and development funds in the amount of $2,430,191; fiscal 2023 Navy research and development funds in the amount of $2,556,351; fiscal 2023 Air Force operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $3,884,771; fiscal 2021 Air National Guard operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $178,184 and Foreign Military Sales funds in the amount of $449,087,548 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Air Dominance Division Contracting Office, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity.

The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) is a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It uses active transmit-receive radar guidance instead of semi-active receive-only radar guidance. It is a fire-and-forget weapon, unlike the previous generation Sparrow missiles which needed guidance from the firing aircraft. When an AMRAAM missile is launched, NATO pilots use the brevity code "Fox Three".