ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- X-Bow Systems Inc. (X-Bow) announced that the United States Navy has awarded it both the Mk 72 booster and Mk 104 dual-thrust solid rocket motor (SRM) development contracts to further enhance performance and increase capacitance for the service's Standard Missile program.
These awards represent the 7th and 8th SRMs to be under development and or awarded to X-Bow in the last 8 months. X-Bow is under contract to supply new SRM's in both strategic and tactical sizes to multiple armed services and commercial customers , while also developing the world's most affordable production giga-campus for SRMs.
Under these two contracts, X-Bow Systems will develop new designs for the Mk 72 and Mk 104 SRMs using its state-of-the-art design tools and unique patented advanced manufacturing approaches for the first and second stage propulsion of the Navy's Standard Missiles (see recent follow-on AFRL RE-ARM contract award for more detail).
The efforts are in collaboration with the Navy's Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) 3.0, Naval Air Warfare Center – Weapons Division at China Lake, Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head and John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
The current contracted efforts are for development of an additional motor supplier to transition to production in the upcoming months. X-Bow Systems is the only supplier to be awarded contracts for both the Mk 72 and Mk 104.