RTX [RTX] said on Jan. 3 that the U.S. Air Force’s Dec. 29 award to the company’s Tucson, Ariz. site for GBU-53B Small Diameter Bomb IIs (SDB IIs)–so called “StormBreakers”–represents another step in the weapon’s production.
On Dec. 29, the Air Force awarded RTX a more than $344 million modification to the StormBreaker Lot 10 production contract to supply Norway, Germany, Italy, and Finland through Aug. 30, 2028 under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The Air Force did not announce the number of StormBreakers under that contract.
The StormBreakers are to help outfit those countries’ F-35s. Less than a month after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022,
Germany announced its plan to buy 35 F-35As to replace the Tornado fighters in the German fleet by 2030 (Defense Daily, March 14, 2022). In December 2022, Germany became the ninth FMS country for the F-35.
Thus far, the StormBreaker is carried on the Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle and U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F–both by Boeing [BA], and testing of the weapon continues on the tri-service and international Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Lightning.
“Across the platforms, StormBreaker completed 28 test drops in 2023,” RTX said on Jan. 3.
In its Jan. 3 announcement, RTX valued the contract at $400 million, not $344 million, and said that the contract funds more than 1,500 StormBreakers, which are to feature multi-effects warheads and tri-mode seekers to attack moving targets in all weather conditions.
Paul Ferraro, president of RTX’s Air Power division, said in the Jan. 3 company statement that the SDB II “has solidified its place as the leading network enabled weapon across the Department of Defense and that the new StormBreaker contract will allow RTX “to evolve StormBreaker’s production to meet the needs of servicemembers for years to come.”