US Navy Awards Raytheon $22.9 Billion Deal to Surge Tomahawk Missile Production
The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon, an RTX business, a $22.9 billion, seven-year contract to accelerate production of the Tomahawk cruise missile, one of the largest single munitions awards of the year and a centerpiece of the Department of War’s “Arsenal of Freedom” push to rebuild the defense industrial base.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said the award “will accelerate Tomahawk missile delivery to our warfighters at unprecedented speed,” framing the deal as a direct response to munitions shortfalls exposed by sustained combat expenditure in recent years.
From 60 to More Than 1,000 a Year
The contract is structured to raise Tomahawk output from roughly 60 missiles annually to more than 1,000 a year by the end of the seven-year period, a more than fifteen-fold increase. Reaching that rate will require Raytheon to expand its supplier base, add tooling and test capacity, and secure long-lead components such as turbofan engines and seeker electronics well ahead of assembly.
The scale of the ramp mirrors a broader shift across the U.S. defense industrial base, where the Pentagon has increasingly favored multi-year, guaranteed-volume contracts over annual buys, giving contractors the demand certainty needed to invest in new production lines rather than surge capacity temporarily and let it lapse.
Tomahawk’s Role in the Fleet
The Tomahawk has been the Navy’s primary sea-launched land-attack cruise missile since the 1980s, carried aboard surface combatants and attack submarines and fired from vertical launch systems and torpedo tubes. Successive variants have added GPS guidance, a two-way satellite data link for in-flight retargeting, and, most recently, a maritime strike mode that lets the missile engage moving ships as well as fixed land targets.
Because Tomahawk inventories are drawn down in every major contingency involving naval strike operations, replenishment rate has become as strategically important as the missile’s range or accuracy. A production base capped near 60 missiles a year cannot keep pace with wartime consumption, a gap defense officials have cited repeatedly when justifying expanded multi-year buys for standoff munitions.
Strategic and Industrial Significance
The award lands alongside parallel efforts to widen the U.S. long-range strike industrial base beyond a single prime contractor per missile family, including a separate Navy contract awarded in August to Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger cruise missile under the CHAOS program. Expanding the number of qualified cruise-missile producers is intended to reduce single-point-of-failure risk in the supply chain and create competitive pressure on unit costs as volumes rise.
For NATO and Indo-Pacific partners that operate or plan to acquire Tomahawk — including the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan — a faster, deeper U.S. production base also shortens the queue for allied orders, which typically compete with U.S. Navy requirements for the same production slots.
Sources
- Department of War / U.S. Navy announcement, Aug. 17-18, 2026, including a statement from Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao — official confirmation of the $22.9 billion award and its scope.
- Defense News, Aug. 17, 2026 — reporting on contract structure and the production-rate targets.
