USA — US Navy

Boe­ing Award­ed Con­tract for Next-Gen­er­a­tion Har­poon Block III Mis­sile

The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny [NYSE: BA] has been award­ed a $73.7 mil­lion U.S. Navy con­tract to design and devel­op the Har­poon Block III mis­sile, a next-gen­er­a­tion weapon sys­tem that will enhance naval sur­face war­fare capabilities.

The sys­tem design and devel­op­ment (SDD) con­tract will result in a kit upgrade pro­gram for exist­ing Navy weapons that will return 800 enhanced sur­face- and air-launch Har­poon mis­siles and 50 ship-launch sys­tems to the service’s inventory.

“The start of SDD is a big mile­stone for the Har­poon pro­gram and is the first major devel­op­ment for the U.S. Navy on Har­poon for many years,” said Jim Young, Jr., Boe­ing Har­poon Block III pro­gram man­ag­er. “Har­poon Block III will pro­vide the warfight­er with a capa­ble, near-term solu­tion to over-the-hori­zon, sur­face war­fare threats.”

Equipped with a new data-link sys­tem, Har­poon Block III will offer warfight­ers more con­trol after the weapon is released, result­ing in improved accu­ra­cy for lit­toral and open-ocean war­fare. The Block III upgrade also posi­tions the mis­sile for future spi­ral devel­op­ments, includ­ing extend­ed range and ver­ti­cal launch capabilities.

Har­poon Block III adds in-flight tar­get updates, pos­i­tive ter­mi­nal con­trol and con­nec­tiv­i­ty with future net­work archi­tec­tures to a proven mis­sile that already pro­vides autonomous, all-weath­er, over-the-hori­zon capability.

The sur­face-launch ver­sion of Har­poon Block III will achieve ini­tial oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty (IOC) in ear­ly 2011 with IOC of the air-launch ver­sion sched­uled for lat­er that year. The next major pro­gram mile­stones will be the Sys­tems Require­ments and Pre­lim­i­nary Design Reviews, both sched­uled for 2008. 

Text- / Bildquelle (source): Boe­ing Cor­po­rate Offices
Ansprech­part­ner / con­tact:
Boe­ing Cor­po­rate Offices
100 North River­side
Chica­go, Illi­nois 60606
www.boeing.com