One of the largest U.S. weapons supplier Raytheon Company announced it was awarded two direct commercial sales contracts by the State of Qatar for additional integrated air and missile defense capability.
The contracts, worth approximately $2.2 billion, include the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, final certification of the AMRAAM-Extended Range missile, and an unspecified quantity of additional Patriot™ fire units. These awards are part of a larger agreement being pursued by the Qataris with the U.S. government. The combined value is expected to total up to $3B.
“Raytheon’s integrated air and missile defense capabilities provide a combat-proven, layered approach that protects citizens, militaries and infrastructure from a broad spectrum of threats,” said Ralph Acaba, President of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.
Qatar is the first country to procure AMRAAM-ER, the surface-to-air extended-range variant of the combat-proven AMRAAM air-to-air-missile. Qatar also becomes the 11th country to procure NASAMS, a medium-range air-defense solution manufactured by Raytheon and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace AS. NASAMS uses the Raytheon Sentinel radar, and fires multiple interceptors, including AMRAAM-ER.
NASAMS is the most widely used short- and medium-range air defense system in NATO. NASAMS provides a high-firepower, networked and distributed state-of-the-art air defense system that can quickly identify, engage and destroy current and evolving threat aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and emerging cruise missile threats.
The combat-proven Patriot™ system is the backbone of air and missile defense for 16 nations. Since it was first fielded, Raytheon’s Patriot has been used by five nations in more than 200 combat engagements against manned and unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles, and tactical ballistic missiles. Since January of 2015, Patriot has intercepted more than 100 ballistic missiles in combat operations around the world; more than 90 of those intercepts involved the low-cost Raytheon-made Guidance Enhanced Missile family of surface-to-air missiles.