Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Army awards area General Dynamics units $66M for grenade launchers

By Mass High Tech Staff

General Dynamics Corp. reports its Armament and Technical Products unit has landed two contracts worth $66 million from the U.S. Army to produce grenade launching machine guns.

The MK19 can fire up to 400 grenades per minute and is intended to be more accurate than other grenade launchers, the company said.

Under the deals, General Dynamics’ (NYSE: GD) Burlington, Vt., and Saco, Maine, facilities will share the management of the project. Work will be performed at the Saco site, which General Dynamics said has produced more than 36,000 MK19 systems for the U.S. government and its allies since 1984. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2009 and continue through late 2012.

Last week, General Dynamics’ Groton, Conn.-based Electric Boat subsidiary landed $268 million from the U.S. Navy for design services for nuclear-powered attack submarines. Under the contract modification, Electric Boat will maintain and update design drawings and data for all Virginia-class submarines, including technology insertions. In addition, Electric Boat will perform Virginia-class development and design studies.

Last month, Bath Iron Works Corp., a ship-building division of General Dynamics, won a $7.36 million contract modification for technical assistance for the DDG-51 class of Aegis destroyers. Also last month, the defense giant’s IT division in Needham landed $6 million from the Army for IT modernizaton services at the Pentagon.

General Dynamics, which employs about 83,500 workers, reported profits of $2.07 billion on $27.2 billion in revenue for 2007.