U.S. Navy adds $41.5M for Tomahawk warhead production in Alabama

General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Defense Research Institute Inc., of Anniston, Alabama, has been awarded a $41.57 million contract modification to build 559 warhead cases and 559 fuzewells for the U.S. Navy’s Tactical Tomahawk missile.

The modification, designated P00016, adds the work to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract, N6893619C0039. It covers production and delivery of the parts for the U/RGM-109E Tactical Tomahawk, the surface- and submarine-launched land-attack version of the missile family. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, California, is the contracting activity.

Work on the order will be performed primarily in Anniston, Alabama, which accounts for 99 percent of the effort, with the remaining 1 percent completed in Houston, Texas. The Navy expects the work to be finished by April 2028. Fiscal 2026 weapons procurement funds covering the full $41,571,985 will be obligated when the award takes effect. The contract was not competed.

The parts being ordered support the WDU-36/B, the blast-fragmentation warhead fitted to the Tactical Tomahawk. The warhead has a titanium case and weighs about 310 kg (690 pounds), carrying roughly 120 kg (265 pounds) of PBXN-107 high explosive. It replaced the heavier WDU-25/B warhead used on earlier Tomahawk variants starting in 1993, a change that also freed up space in the missile body for additional fuel. A fuzewell is the internal housing that holds the warhead’s fuze assembly, which triggers detonation.

The order arrives as Tomahawk’s prime contractor, RTX unit Raytheon, ramps up production of the missile under a separate arrangement. Raytheon announced on Aug. 17 that it had won a $22.9 billion, seven-year Navy contract to accelerate Tomahawk output, awarded under the Department of War’s Arsenal of Freedom initiative. That award followed framework agreements Raytheon signed with the department in February, which set a target of ramping annual Tomahawk output to more than 1,000 missiles. RTX has said Tomahawk production stood at roughly 60 missiles per year for U.S. forces before those February agreements, putting the planned ramp at more than 15 times that rate.

RTX also said it delivered three times more Tomahawks in the first half of 2026 than in the first half of 2025, and that it will work with hundreds of small and mid-sized suppliers nationwide to scale output under the new contract. GD-OTS functions as one of those suppliers, producing warhead hardware that feeds into Raytheon’s final missile assembly. The Anniston work is separate from the Raytheon contract and funded through a different procurement line, but it points to the same production increase across the Tomahawk supply base.

RTX did not disclose current annual production figures or a timeline for reaching the 1,000-missile target when it announced the new contract. It also did not say which Navy platforms or allied programs the additional missiles would support. The company has said the Tomahawk has been flight tested more than 550 times and used operationally more than 2,300 times since it entered service.

Tomahawk missiles launch from Navy surface ships and submarines and strike targets at ranges of roughly 1,600 km (1,000 miles). The U/RGM-109E variant covered by the new GD-OTS order is the Tactical Tomahawk configuration, which added a two-way satellite datalink allowing the missile to be redirected or given a new target while in flight, along with the ability to loiter over a target area.