Bahraini Patriot PAC-3 missile procurement confirmed

The US Department of Defense has announced a USD94 million contract award to Lockheed Martin that includes Bahrain as a customer for the Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile for the first time. The contract covers “technical assistance support for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile segment” in several other countries that were already known to be PAC-3 customers.

The US State Department approved the sale to Bahrain of two Patriot batteries with 35 GEM-T missiles and 60 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles for an estimated USD2.5 billion in May 2019. The PAC-3 MSE has a longer range than the standard PAC-3 missile. Both are designed to destroy ballistic missiles by colliding with them, unlike the GEM-T, which relies on a fragmentation warhead.

Raytheon, which makes the Patriot and the GEM-T missile, announced in March 2020 that it had received a USD551 million contract to begin production of the Patriot for Bahrain, which it said would become the 17th country to operate the system.