Article Posted on : - Aug 30, 2016

MK54 is designed for both deep water and littoral environments, making it the only lightweight torpedo capable of striking any target in the world's oceans, regardless of water depth. Photo: Raytheon.

TEWKSBURY (BNS): The US Navy has awarded $37,723,774 firm-fixed-price, fixed-price-incentive, cost and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to Raytheon Company for the procurement of MK 54 lightweight torpedo common parts kits; MK 54 Mod 0 lightweight torpedo kits; and MK 54 exercise fuel tanks, spares, production support material, engineering support, and hardware repair support.

This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $448,737,790. This contract combines purchases for the US Navy (98 percent) and the Government of Thailand (2 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales Programme, according to the company news release.

Work will be completed by May 2019. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity.

The MK 54 can be deployed from a surface ship, helicopter or fixed wing aircraft to track, classify and attack underwater targets. It uses sophisticated processing algorithms to analyse the information, edit out false targets or countermeasures, and then pursue identified threats.

The MK 54 programme leverages the most modern torpedo technologies from the MK 50 and MK 48 ADCAP (advanced capability) programmes. It also utilises the proven MK 46 warhead and propulsion subsystems.