DALLAS, the USA (BulgarianMilitary.com), June 28, 2018, Author: Galina Zdravkova, Photo credit: Lockheed Martin

This week turns out to be quite busy for Lockheed Martin. After the Bahrain F-16 contract, another contract was announced on the same day – Monday, 25th June and this time it is for production of Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles for the U.S. Army, as well as for a Foreign Military Sales customer, learned BulgarianMilitary.com

The new contract is worth $364 million and thanks to it the military services will modernize their existing Block 1 missiles with new technology and double the range. The shelf life of the missiles will be also extended by more than 10 years and the warfighters will be provided with the latest surface-to-surface missile capability.

The production of both the SLEP and new ATACMS rounds will take place at the Precision Fires Production Center of Excellence of Lockheed in Camden, Arkansas. The delivery of all missiles under the contract are planned to be completed by January 2021.

More than 3,850 ATACMS missiles have been manufactured by Lockheed Martin as of the moment and more than 600 ATACMS of them have been fired in combat. Therefore there are lots of evidences of the extreme accuracy and reliability of the system while in theater.

The ATACMS missile, each in a Guided Missile Launch Assembly pod, is fired from a launcher of the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) family.

BulgarianMilitary.com