UK awards $27 million Trident missile engineering support contract to Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin Space System is being awarded a $27,057,230 contract to provide the United Kingdom with engineering and technical support services and deliverable materials for the Trident II Missile System. 

According to a US DoD contract notice, this contract provides for technical planning, direction, coordination, and control to ensure that UK Fleet Ballistic Missile Program requirements are identified and integrated to support planned milestone schedules and emergent requirements, re-entry Systems UK resident technical support and operational support hardware and consumable spares are also provided for.

“Work will be performed in Sunnyvale, California (41.82 percent); Cape Canaveral, Florida (29.70 percent); Denver, Colorado (17.68 percent); Coulport, Scotland (3.77 percent); St. Mary’s, Georgia (1.54 percent); Silverdale, Washington (1.38 percent); and various places below one percent (4.11 percent), with an expected level-of-effort completion date of March 31, 2019; a deliverable items completion date of June 30, 2020; and a collaborative replacement material experiments design completion date of March 31, 2022.”

UK contract funds in the amount of $27,057,230 are being utilised says the notice.

Recently, the successful launch of two Trident II D5 Life Extension missiles by the USS Nebraska demonstrated the readiness of the crew and strategic weapon system say the US Navy. The test, known as Demonstration and Shakedown Operation 28, took place in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California earlier in the week.

“In addition to certifying the submarine and crew for patrol, the test launch collected valuable data about the performance of the D5 Life Extension missile configuration,” said Eric Scherff, vice president of Navy Strategic Programs at Lockheed Martin.

“Instead of warheads, the missiles carried test kits and instrumentation to give us troves of information about flight and subsystem performance. The joint government and industry team will use this data to assess performance and to inform maintenance and sustainment plans for the upgraded Trident missile fleet for decades to come.”

Lockheed say that the joint government-industry team achieved initial fleet introduction of the D5 Life Extension, or LE, design last year. With modernised electronics and upgraded avionics subsystems, the Trident II D5 LE configuration will be in service with the US Navy and Royal Navy through the 2040s.