PAC-3 missile-defense interceptor production: ~$9.85B — the Army's 2024 award to Lockheed Martin for a terminal-phase interceptor (USAspending)

PAC-3 is the interceptor operated by the PATRIOT surface-to-air missile system. As its full name — Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept On Target — suggests, it uses a "hit-to-kill" approach, striking a radar-tracked threat such as a ballistic missile or aircraft by direct impact.

Compared with older methods that neutralize a threat with explosive fragments, this concept relies on accuracy itself to knock the target down, handling terminal-phase (the lower layer where a target finally descends) air defense.

What USAspending records for this contract is the "production" of that interceptor, plus the incidental services, hardware, facilities, and equipment, and the technical, planning, management, and manufacturing efforts. The description goes no further — it does not state specific production quantities or fielding locations (this site does not fill in what the description omits).

What can be read is the U.S. procurement pattern of bundling not a one-off purchase but the whole apparatus that sustains series production into a single large contract.

Worth noting are the timing and scale. A cumulative ~$9.85B contract that begins in 2024 and runs to 2030 reads as an intent to build up interceptor production capacity over several years amid a rising ballistic-missile threat. Since missile defense "does not work without rounds to fire," the continued production of the interceptors themselves is the foundation that determines the effectiveness of the defensive posture.