Lockheed Martin Awarded $29.4 Million Navy Order to Support Saudi Warship

The Navy awarded Lockheed Martin's Rotary and Mission Systems unit a $29.4 million order to service Saudi Arabia's lead Multi-Mission Surface Combatant through February 2031 under the foreign military sales program.

First Published: July 30, 2026, 1:30 PM ET

MOORESTOWN, NEW JERSEY — Lockheed Martin’s Rotary and Mission Systems unit received a $29.4 million Navy order to support Saudi Arabia’s first Multi-Mission Surface Combatant, as announced on war.gov.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee order, numbered N6278626F0032, modifies a previously awarded contract and covers engineering and management support for the lead ship’s post shakedown availability, an industrial post-delivery availability, and continuous maintenance. Foreign military sales funding of $26.9 million will be obligated at award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

Rotary and Mission Systems ranks among the five operating units of Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor by sales. The segment employs roughly 35,000 people across the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries, and its portfolio spans more than 1,000 programs including the Aegis combat system, radar, undersea warfare and maritime systems, according to lockheedmartin.com. The unit moved its headquarters from Moorestown, New Jersey, to Washington in 2008, though Moorestown remains one of its largest sites and houses many top executives, according to wikipedia.org.

The purchase serves the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the Pentagon’s foreign military sales program, which lets allied governments buy U.S. defense equipment and services through the Defense Department. Saudi Arabia stands as one of the largest buyers in the program. The order sustains U.S. shipyard and engineering jobs while extending Riyadh’s naval capability in the Persian Gulf.

Work will split between Mayport, Florida, which carries 67% of the effort, and Moorestown, New Jersey, at 33%. The delivery order should be completed by February 2031. The Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion, and Repair, in Bath, Maine, is the contracting activity.

The Multi-Mission Surface Combatant derives from the Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship that Lockheed Martin built for the U.S. Navy. Its inclusion in the company’s product line reflects a broader push to sell derivatives of American warship designs to allied navies, according to wikipedia.org.

For the average U.S. reader, the award reflects how foreign military sales channel allied money into domestic shipyards and engineering centers. Florida and New Jersey workers draw paychecks tied to the maintenance of a ship that sails under a foreign flag, and Saudi funding rather than U.S. taxpayer money underwrites the order.

This has happened before. Lockheed Martin has repeatedly won post-delivery and maintenance orders tied to the Saudi surface combatant program, layering engineering support onto the base contract that began under N00024-18-C-2301. Sustainment orders of this kind commonly follow ship deliveries as vessels move through shakedown and into regular service.

The next decision point rests with the Navy and the Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion, and Repair in Bath, Maine, which manages the contract and would authorize any follow-on work. A date for additional awards has not been announced.

Moorestown has anchored U.S. naval combat-system work for decades, and this order isn’t the first time the town’s engineers have shaped ships bound for distant seas. The site built its reputation as the land-based test home of the AN/SPY-1 radar and the Aegis combat system, technologies that entered the fleet aboard the cruiser Ticonderoga in 1983, according to wikipedia.org. That radar spread to dozens of allied warships across Japan, South Korea, Australia and Spain in the decades that followed, cementing Moorestown’s role as a hub whose exports outlived the local headquarters it lost in 2008.