The US Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command has awarded a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to Raytheon for engineering and manufacturing development of the BRU-69/A multipurpose bomb rack (MPBR) system.

Under the $32.4m contract, Raytheon will design, develop and build the bomb rack system, which will replace several bomb racks currently deployed on navy aircraft.

The company has teamed up with Ultra Electronics, which will produce the airborne high-pressure pure air generator that produces the pneumatic energy for the release system.

MPBR system will use pneumatic energy instead of an explosive charge to release the weapon from the rack and is compatible with the current and future precision-guided weapons.

The engineering and manufacturing development phase of the programme will be completed in 2014 and full-scale production will start in 2017.