The $22.9 Billion Tomahawk Contract Runs Into an 18-Month Clock

Raytheon gets seven years of certainty. Rocket-motor chemistry and sub-tier suppliers set the replenishment clock, and Ukraine's Fire Point is running a cheaper, distributed answer to the same problem.

The August 17 Award

On August 17, the Navy awarded Raytheon a $22.9 billion, seven-year contract to lift Tomahawk production above 1,000 missiles a year, Reuters reported. The award gives the prime the certainty to expand. It does not replace the more than 1,000 Tomahawks CSIS estimates the United States fired at Iran, and it does not restore the prewar inventory before 2030 or 2031.

The contract formalizes a February 4 Arsenal of Freedom framework between RTX and the Department of War. Raytheon President Phil Jasper called Tomahawk "the Navy's most important strike weapon" and said the company was making "significant investments in our workforce, technology, supply chain and facilities." Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Duffey said the award would ensure "our Warfighters never face a fair fight."

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said the contract would accelerate deliveries "at unprecedented speed," adding: "We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering." RTX said it tripled first-half deliveries from 2025 to 2026, raised 2026 capital spending from $2.6 billion to $3.1 billion and would work through hundreds of small and midsize suppliers. It gave no schedule for reaching 1,000 and no breakdown of the award among missiles, support and supplier investment.

Raytheon had been building about 60 Tomahawks a year for U.S. forces, so the target is more than 16 times that baseline. The subsonic missile launches from ships, submarines and ground systems, reaches about 1,000 miles and has been used operationally more than 2,300 times, according to RTX. Trump offered a different measure on contract day: "What we've used is peanuts."