U.S. Navy Approves New Tomahawk Missile Upgrades to Sustain Long-Range Strike Through 2029.

The U.S. Navy has awarded a $380.8 million contract modification to Raytheon to expand Tomahawk cruise missile recertification and modernization work through 2029. The move strengthens U.S. long-range strike capacity by extending the life and capability of existing missile inventories at scale.

On January 21, 2026, the U.S. Department of War confirmed that Naval Air Systems Command had awarded Raytheon Co. (RTX), Tucson, Arizona, a $380,809,286 fixed-price incentive and firm-fixed-price contract modification (P00010) under contract N0001925C0071 to expand and finalize ongoing Tomahawk cruise missile modernization efforts. The action raises the total definitized contract value to $476,519,069 and covers Lot Five and Lot Six recertification and modernization activities, depot-level operations, recertification hardware, and spares, including rotable pool assets, with work scheduled to conclude in April 2029.
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Tomahawk is a long-range, subsonic precision cruise missile launched from ships, submarines, and land systems, with satellite-linked in-flight retargeting and upgradeable variants for maritime strike and hardened targets (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) remains the Navy’s workhorse standoff weapon for deep strike, fired from surface combatants and submarines, including U.S. Navy platforms and United Kingdom Royal Navy submarines. In an era where magazines and munitions stocks are as strategically decisive as platforms, depot-level modernization is how the Navy preserves day-one mass while it grows newer variants and expands production capacity.

Tomahawk is a subsonic, all-weather cruise missile optimized for survivable, low-altitude penetration and long-range precision. A solid-propellant booster kicks it off the launcher, then a turbofan sustains cruise flight along mission-tailored routes using a blend of inertial navigation and terrain and scene matching with GPS support. The Navy lists Block IV and Block V TLAM-E range at about 900 nautical miles and highlights Block IV’s two-way satellite communications that enable in-flight retasking, loitering, and post-strike battle damage reporting via its onboard camera. Those features are not marketing trivia; they are the operational logic of Tomahawk, a weapon that can be redirected as the maritime picture evolves.

The heart of the current recap pipeline is recertification at the missile’s mid-life point, replacing life-limited components to unlock roughly 15 additional years of service and creating the opening to insert Block V improvements. Early Block V missiles were recertified and modernized from the existing Block IV inventory, and all Block IV missiles are slated for the same process. Block V’s navigation and communications upgrade is designed to improve navigation performance and provide more robust, reliable communications, a crucial advantage when electronic warfare, spoofing, and jamming are no longer edge cases but baseline threats. The broader Tomahawk modernization roadmap frames these upgrades as foundational for future capability growth rather than isolated fixes.

Two specific upgrade paths matter most tactically. First, Maritime Strike Tomahawk, known as Block Va, adds a seeker kit to engage moving ships at sea, restoring a long-range anti-surface option that complicates an adversary’s naval calculus far beyond the range of most shipboard missiles. Second, Block Vb replaces the legacy warhead with the Joint Multiple Effects Warhead System, intended to broaden the target set with improved effects against hardened or more demanding aimpoints while retaining a single-missile standoff profile. RTX has described the modernization arc as taking an already combat-proven weapon and raising it to a new level as seekers and upgraded networking mature.

The January 21 award also reveals how widely Tomahawk now spans U.S. force design. Funding lines include Navy weapons procurement, Army missile procurement, and Marine Corps procurement, alongside $99.4 million in Foreign Military Sales funds. That mix aligns with the Army’s Typhon Mid-Range Capability, which the Army has already used to fire Tomahawk from a land-based launcher, giving combatant commanders a harder-to-target, shore-based option for distributed strike. Foreign Military Sales funding, meanwhile, underscores that allied readiness is being sustained inside the same industrial and depot ecosystem, preserving interoperability while reducing the risk that partners run short on usable rounds during a prolonged crisis.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.