Lockheed to build new missile launchers for the UAE

The Missile Defense Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $211.4 million contract modification to build new Configuration 3 THAAD launchers for the United Arab Emirates, the agency announced August 12, 2026.

Lockheed Martin Space in Sunnyvale, California, will manufacture the launchers under a Foreign Military Sales case, the government-to-government arrangement the U.S. uses to sell defense equipment to allied nations. The modification raises the total value of the underlying 2019 contract to just over $1.05 billion. Work is scheduled to run from August 2026 through January 2031. The Missile Defense Agency, headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, is the contracting activity, and the agency said it solicited one offer and received one offer for the modification.

THAAD, short for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is a ground-based system designed to intercept ballistic missiles during the final phase of their flight, either just inside or outside the atmosphere. It uses hit-to-kill technology, destroying an incoming warhead through the force of impact rather than an explosive warhead of its own. The system is globally transportable by air, land or sea, allowing batteries to relocate to new theaters relatively quickly compared with fixed missile defense infrastructure. A single THAAD battery typically consists of six truck-mounted launchers, an AN/TPY-2 radar for tracking incoming threats, a fire control and communications unit, and the interceptor missiles themselves, all networked together to detect, track and destroy a target before it reaches the ground.

Configuration 3 refers to an updated version of the THAAD launcher hardware. The Missile Defense Agency has said System Build 5.0, which includes Configuration 3 hardware alongside mission assurance updates, is expected to be added to the agency’s baseline system architecture in July 2026. THAAD System Build 4.0 Global, an earlier hardware and software update, was added to the agency’s baseline in August 2023.

The UAE was the first country outside the United States to field THAAD, receiving its first battery from Lockheed Martin in October 2015 under what was also THAAD’s first foreign military sale. Dawn Golightly, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Upper Tier Integrated Air and Missile Defense, has described the decision to field THAAD in the UAE as a foundational moment for the broader U.S.-UAE defense relationship. The system has since seen real combat use in the country. In January 2022, UAE-based THAAD interceptors carried out the system’s first operational intercepts, downing ballistic missiles fired toward Abu Dhabi, including one aimed at Al-Dhafra Air Base, home to U.S. and French forces stationed in the country. Those strikes came amid a wave of ballistic missile and drone attacks the Houthi movement in Yemen launched against the UAE that year.

The UAE has continued expanding its missile defense purchases since that initial 2015 sale. The country now operates a layered defense architecture that pairs THAAD’s exoatmospheric and high-altitude intercept capability with Patriot PAC-3 and GEM-T missiles for shorter-range, lower-altitude threats, along with AN/TPY-2 radars supplied separately for early tracking and cueing. That combination has made the UAE one of the most heavily defended nations in the Gulf region against ballistic missile and drone threats, a priority that has only grown given Iran’s expanding missile arsenal and repeated Houthi attacks against Gulf states in recent years.

The Missile Defense Agency did not specify how many Configuration 3 launchers this contract modification covers or where the completed units will be delivered within the UAE’s existing THAAD infrastructure.