Lockheed Martin is awarded a $172 million contract for next-generation long range anti-ship missiles (LRASM) Lot 2 production.

In a statement made Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defence said that the contract allows for the production of 50 LRASMs.

Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida, and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2021.

According to the Lockheed Martin, LRASM is a long range, precision-guided anti-ship missile leveraging off of the successful JASSM-ER heritage, and is designed to meet the needs of U.S. Navy and Air Force warfighters. Armed with a penetrator and blast fragmentation warhead, LRASM employs precision routing and guidance, day or night in all weather conditions.

The missile employs a multi-modal sensor suite, weapon data link, and enhanced digital anti-jam Global Positioning System to detect and destroy specific targets within a group of numerous ships at sea.

Lockheed Martin is currently executing on the Accelerated Acquisition contract for the LRASM Deployment Office. This contract is further maturing the technologies that will be delivered as an early operational capability in LRASM for the USAF B-1B and USN F/A-18E/F in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

This operational capability will provide warfighter with the solution to their anti-surface warfare capability gap. Lockheed Martin also noted that the company has begun the integration efforts onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

LRASM Air Launched Flight Testing: