• The MK54 lightweight torpedo has scored Raytheon a $42.6 million contract with the US Navy.
    The MK54 lightweight torpedo has scored Raytheon a $42.6 million contract with the US Navy.
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Raytheon IDS has been awarded a $42.6 million US Navy contract to provide 100 MK54 kits for US fleet inventory and in support of foreign military sales.

This award includes options for additional quantities for both domestic and international assets.

Total contract value, if all options are exercised, could exceed $550 million over five years.

As many of our readers will know*, the original intention was to equip the AP-3C Orion and the Seahawk and SeaSprite helicopters with the MU90 LWT system, but the SeaSprite was cancelled in 2008 and integration on the Orion and Seahawk was removed from the scope of JP2070 in early 2009 ostensibly because of the risk and difficulties involved.

And the decision by the Australian Government to purchase 24 MH-60R Seahawk Romeo naval helicopters and to equip them with FMS-acquired Mk54 lightweight torpedoes, rather than the NH-90 equipped to fire the MU90, appeared to be the final nail in the coffin of an air platform capability for the MU90 in Australia, (where surely the real merits of a lightweight torpedo lie).

Thus the MU90 is finally being introduced in this country as a shipboard weapon only.

*Picking over Djimindi’s bones, ADM, 9/11

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