American aerospace and defense company Raytheon has been awarded a $208 million contract to arm Romania with mobile coastal anti-ship missile batteries, the Pentagon announced.
Working with the Norwegian company Kongsberg, Raytheon will provide Romania an unspecified number of Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense Systems as part of the deal that could be worth up to $217 million after all the options are exercised, according to the announcement on Thursday.
The bulk of the work will be done in Norway and at Raytheon’s facility in Tucson, Arizona, according to the statement.
Romania, which is a member of NATO and the European Union, has a more than 100-mile coastline on the Black Sea, which is jome to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet.
According to a 2021 report from Norwegian engineering magazine Teknisk Ukeblad, the deal would pay for two coastal defense systems that would amount to four mobile launchers and two command and control nodes for the batteries.
The NSM was developed initially for the Royal Norwegian Navy as a modern anti-ship missile with a range of more than 100 nautical miles for its surface fleet. The ground-based launcher was developed by Kongsberg in part for export sales paired with a command and control system.
The U.S. and Romania signed a military sales agreement in 2021 to acquire the Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense System. In addition to Norway and the U.S., Poland is fielding NSM. Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Malaysia and Germany also plan to use the missiles.
In November, the British Ministry of Defense reached a deal to outfit 11 Royal Navy warships with the NSMs in a direct deal with Norway as a replacement to its current Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
