SAIC gets $112M to build more MK 48 torpedoes

The U.S. Navy awarded Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC, a $112 million contract modification to continue producing components for the MK 48 Mod 7 heavyweight torpedo, the primary submarine-launched weapon of the U.S. Navy and Royal Australian Navy.

The work covers production of torpedo components, spare parts, production support materials, engineering support, and hardware repair, with 80 percent of the effort performed at SAIC’s facility in Bedford, Indiana, and the remaining 20 percent in Middletown, Rhode Island. Completion is expected by April 2029.

The MK 48 Mod 7 is the most capable variant of America’s primary heavyweight torpedo, a weapon that has been the U.S. Navy’s submarine-to-submarine and submarine-to-surface killer since its introduction in the early 1970s. The torpedo is 19 feet long, weighs approximately 3,500 pounds, and carries a 650-pound high-explosive warhead. It operates at depths exceeding 1,200 feet, reaches speeds of over 55 knots, and uses a combination of active and passive sonar guidance to chase and track targets, including those that attempt to evade after detecting the incoming weapon.

The Mod 7 variant, the result of a joint development program between the United States and Australia that reached initial operational capability in 2006, incorporates improved guidance electronics, enhanced acoustic homing, and better performance in the shallow-water littoral environments where both navies increasingly expect to operate.

SAIC, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, has been embedded in the MK 48 production supply chain for years. The company holds a foundational $1.1 billion contract awarded in 2021 to produce, assemble, test, and deliver the torpedo’s Afterbody Tailcone and MK29 Mod 0 Warshot Fuel Tanks. The Afterbody Tailcone is the rear section of the torpedo containing propulsion and navigation systems, integrating more than 500 individual parts across 26 major sub-assemblies in each unit. That level of integration complexity explains why SAIC, which manages the facilities, resources, and program management for the production line, has built an irreplaceable position in this supply chain. The current $112 million modification is a continuation of that established production relationship, exercising options on the existing contract to sustain output through 2029.

The award draws on fiscal year 2025 weapons procurement funds, fiscal year 2026 funds, fiscal year 2024 funds, and a small contribution from foreign partner money covering Australia’s share of the purchase. That multi-year funding draw reflects a deliberate effort to accelerate torpedo production and ensure that procurement dollars obligated now translate into delivered weapons over the next several years rather than waiting on future budget cycles. The foreign partner contribution, covering 1 percent of the contract value, confirms Australia’s continued participation in the Mod 7 program under Foreign Military Sales, maintaining the bilateral production relationship that produced the variant in the first place.

The U.S. Navy has been vocal about torpedo inventory shortfalls, and the MK 48 Mod 7’s unit cost of approximately $4.2 million per weapon makes it an expensive proposition to stockpile in the quantities the submarine force requires. The Navy is pursuing a parallel program, the Rapid Affordable Producible Torpedo known as RAPTOR, as a potential lower-cost supplement at a target price of $500,000 or less per weapon, but RAPTOR remains a developmental concept at this stage. The MK 48 Mod 7 is what the submarine force carries today, and it is what the Navy needs more of now.

Submarines win wars by being in the right place with the right weapons at the right time. Everything else about the MK 48 Mod 7 program, the contracts, the funding lines, the production facilities, the engineering support, is infrastructure in service of that single operational reality. This contract is $112 million toward ensuring that reality holds.