Pentagon Awards $2.5 Billion in New Contracts Friday

The Department of Defense ended the week with a bang (if you'll pardon the expression) Friday. Across a field of 26 contracts awarded, the Pentagon laid out plans to spend nearly $2.5 billion in total. A few of the publicly traded companies winning awards included:

Safran (NASDAQOTH: SAFRY  ) subsidiary Messier-Bugatti-Dowty. The French defense contractor won an $80.6 million firm-fixed-priced requirements contract to manufacture replacement parts for the carbon brake system on the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft. Messier will perform work, as and when requested by the Air Force, out of its U.S. facility in Walton, Ky., and aims to complete work on the contract by Dec. 31, 2018. Sysco (NYSE: SYY  ) landed a $67.5 million fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment bridge contract to supply food and beverages to Department of Defense and non-Department of Defense customers in Virginia, Honduras, and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba through June 29, 2014. Exelis (NYSE: XLS  ) received a $20.3 million contract modification to fund the purchase of AN/SPS-48G(V) radar modification kits to be used in a U.S. Navy program dubbed the "Recovery Obsolescence Availability Radar" (ROAR ). ROAR aims to extend the service lift of old radar systems used by the Navy. Exelis is due to deliver the kits by October 2015. Engility (NYSE: EGL  ) received a $12.5 million contract modification of its own, when the Navy exercised an "option" to have Engility provide additional engineering services in support of the Joint Precision Approach and Landing Systems (JPALS) and the Navy Unmanned Combat Aerial Systems (UCAS) programs through January 2014. JPALS is actually a Raytheon program in its origin, and aims to improve landing patterns by military aircraft with use of GPS signals. UCAS, as the name implies, is an experimental program to develop pilotless fighter jets for the U.S. Navy. Last and least (at least in dollar value), Harris Corp (NYSE: HRS  ) won a $9.4 million contract modification to supply the Navy with AN/WSC-6 E(V)9 satellite communication (SATCOM) systems. Work on this contract should wrap up by June 25, 2014. Options attached to this modification, however, could ultimately increase its value to Harris to as much as $40.5 million, and extend its duration through March 2016.