Raytheon wins contract to replace donated Stingers

The Army awarded Raytheon a $625 million contract last week to produce Stinger missiles through June 2026, which should replenish stocks of a missile that the service relies upon but has not bought in two decades, according to a Pentagon contract announcement.

Raytheon will build 1,300 of the shoulder-mounted air defense missiles under the contract, according to a press release from the company. The contract was awarded May 25 and announced May 27, according to the Army announcement.

Supplemental funding that Congress passed to aid Ukraine will pay for the missile procurement, according to the Raytheon press release.

A Pentagon reprogramming earlier this month included $673 million for Stinger replenishment by the Army and Navy. The military has sent at least 1,400 of the decades-old missiles to Ukraine.

The expected surge in Stinger production will not reach large volumes until at least next year, Raytheon’s chief executive said last month. Domestic production has been extremely low in recent years, and it takes time for supply chains to catch up.

Doug Bush, the Army acquisition executive, said this month that the service would use "different targeted authorities” to speed up production. Other services that use the Stinger acquire the missile through Army contracts.

The Army plans to field a new version of the missile, which remains a key enabler to its modernization portfolio, by fiscal year 2027. But the service left $60 million in FY-23 Stinger replacement research money out of its budget request, even though the funding is necessary to meet the FY-27 deadline, according to the Army chief of staff’s unfunded priorities list.