2 Arizona defense companies awarded contract worth nearly $1 billion
Sep 27, 2022, 4:35 AM
(Facebook Photo)
(Facebook Photo)
PHOENIX — Two Arizona defense companies were awarded a nearly $1 billion cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for hypersonic missiles last week.
Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman were awarded $985,348,124 to design, development and deliver the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) by March 2027, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
A scramjet engine uses supersonic airflow through the engine, or greater than the speed of sound. The vehicles are envisioned to operate at speeds up to at least Mach 15 (approximately 3,800 miles per hour), per NASA.
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The two companies have been working together since 2019 on a hypersonic weapon that uses Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engines into Raytheon’s air-breathing hypersonic weapons, according to the Phoenix Business Journal.
Raytheon has a facility located in Tucson with more than 12,000 employees on site.
Northrop Grumman has a facility in Chandler with just over 2,500 people.
This is a joint initiative between the U.S. and Australia called the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE, per the Phoenix Business Journal.
