Aerospace Unit Gets Sidewinder Project

Ford Aerospace & Communications Corp. said Monday that its Newport Beach facility has won a four-year, $38.5-million contract to develop the next generation guidance control system, the “brains” of the U.S. Navy’s 30-year-old Sidewinder air-to-air missile system.

A Ford spokesman said the new contract, which calls for the company to develop and build 65 of the new systems for test and evaluation, will not result in any significant new hiring at its Orange County facility.

Although Ford has been building guidance systems for Sidewinder missiles since their inception more than 30 years ago, the company said it won the contract to develop the new system in a head-to-head competition with Raytheon Corp. The development contract includes options for full-scale production contract awards.

The new guidance control package is expected to have several optical systems to allow the missile to zero-in on its target, an improvement over the current missile system which has only one target detector.