Raytheon has been awarded a $65,801,757 modification contract for Lot XIII Airborne Low Frequency Sonar systems for the U.S. Navy and Saudi Arabia.

The modification to a previous contract covers the procurement of 20 sonar systems for use on MH-60R Seahawk multi-mission helicopters for the U.S. Navy and 2 sonar systems for Saudi Arabia, including associated program support.

The purchase for the government of Saudi Arabia, nearly $6 million of the total, comes under the Foreign Military Sales Program.

Work on the sonar systems will be performed in France, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, and is expected to be completed by September 2018.

The Airborne Low Frequency Sonar is the primary undersea sensor for the MH-60R Seahawk, and comes integrated with a dipping sonar system. This allows the aircraft to detect submarine activity and intercept underwater communications.

The system is currently the only in-service dipping sonar with a multi-frequency operation, according to Raytheon.

The Naval Air Systems Command based in Patuxent River, Md., is contracting the activity.

Lockheed Martin to continue sonar system development
Washington (UPI) Nov 6, 2015 –

Lockheed Martin is being given a Navy Sea Systems contract modification to continue development and production of a sonar system.

The modification is the exercise of an option in a contract awarded earlier to Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Training and is worth more than $129.4 million for fiscal 2016.

Being developed for the Navy is the Acoustic Rapid Commercial Off-The-Shelf Insertion system, a sonar system that integrates and improves towed array, hull array, sphere array, and other ship sensor processing, through rapid insertion of COTS-based hardware and software.

"The contract provides funding for the development and production of the A-RCI and common acoustics processing for Technology Insertion 12 through Technology Insertion 14 for the U.S. submarine fleet and for foreign military sales," the Department of Defense said.

Work under the contract option is expected to be completed by December 2016.