MBDA has received a £175 million contract from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) for further In-Service Support to the Sea Viper weapon system, securing a key capability of the Type 45 fleet.

Called ‘Sea Viper Unified Support Environment Period 1’, the contract will cover the continuing in-service support to the Sea Viper weapon system, including the Aster missile that protects the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers, for the next 5 years.

The Unified Support Environment (USE) is the principle of providing in-service support to UK MoD Weapon Systems and Missiles in a portfolio environment. The USE approach is designed to reduce support workload and administrative costs, and has already been successfully applied to several other MBDA programs, including ASRAAM, Brimstone and Storm Shadow.

The work will sustain around 50 MBDA UK jobs, primarily at Stevenage, Portsmouth, and Bristol and will also involve a large number of UK companies in the supply chain as well as MBDA France and MBDA Italy.

With a significant presence in five European countries and within the USA, in 2015 MBDA achieved a turnover of € 3 billion with an order book of € 15.9 billion. With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems.

MBDA is the only European group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air). In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development.

MBDA is jointly owned by Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%).