Dutch $691 million request for Sidewinder missiles approved

The approval for the purchase follows other orders approved or placed in the past year by Romania, Poland, Italy and South Korea.

The US State Department has approved the sale of 246 AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II tactical short-range air-to-air missiles to the Netherlands under a Foreign Military Sale deal worth around US$261 million.

As well as the missiles, the deal includes six AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder captive air training missiles (CATM), two AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder special air training missiles, 14 AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder tactical guidance units and two AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder CATM guidance units.

Also included are ancillary equipment and services such as missile containers, spares, personnel training and training equipment, US Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services and other related elements of logistics and programme support.

In May the US State Department approved the sale of 300 Sidewinder AIM-9X Block II AAMs to Romania in a deal worth an estimated US$340.8 million which, like, the Dutch sale, includes a range of CATM and other equipment and services.

In March Italy has requested 28 more Sidewinder Block II+ missiles from the US on top of the approximately 1,000 AIM-9s already delivered, a request worth an additional $90 million, and in the same month Poland requested 232 of the missiles. In November last year South Korea requested 42 missiles and other systems.

These orders and approved sales, as well as other missile orders, have placed pressure on Raytheon supply chains especially in the area of rocket motor manufacture.

In July the company highlighted its challenges in this area and in the same month announced that it had signed a deal with Avio to “to initiate and progress the development of critical solid rocket motors for defence applications”.