On Monday, April 6, 2026, the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), part of the Air Force Materiel Command and based at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, signed a 708,939,863 contract USD with Raytheon, a company within RTX Corporation, for the production of the 12th full-rate production lot of GBU-53/B StormBreaker guided bombs for eight export customers.
Photo and image: RTX
In addition to an unspecified number of live guided bombs, the contract also provides for the delivery of test equipment (inert training bombs, editor’s note), transport containers, and a package of spare parts.
Work will be carried out at Raytheon’s facilities in Tucson, Arizona, and is scheduled for completion by March 6, 2030. The contract is being executed under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program for the following export users: Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, the Republic of Korea, and Switzerland.
Funding for the contract comes from USAF missile procurement funds under the FY2026 NDAA defense budget in the amount of 128,215,305 USD, operations and maintenance funds for 2026 in the amount of 1,871,338 USD, unobligated prior-year weapons procurement funds from 2025 in the amount of 5,291,774 USD, weapons procurement funds for 2026 in the amount of 31,567,101 USD, and FMS program funds in the amount of 171,558,544 USD.
The previous production contract was signed on January 31, 2025, and increased the cumulative value of earlier orders to 366.51 million USD.
Analysis
According to the available information, Belgium has been approved to purchase 196 GBU-53/B SDB II StormBreaker bombs; Canada, 2,004 bombs; Finland, 500 bombs; Germany, 344 bombs; Italy, 173 bombs; Norway, 580 bombs; the Republic of Korea, 118 bombs; and Switzerland, 12 bombs. For all of these users, the delivery platform for the bombs will be the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II multirole aircraft (StormBreaker one step closer to integration with the F-35). In addition, StormBreaker has been cleared for use on the F-15E Strike Eagle (integration since 2020, operational readiness since 2022) and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
In addition to the countries listed above, Australia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, and Poland have also either decided to acquire the bombs or are planning to do so. In Poland’s case, this involves an initial batch of three bombs and eight full-scale dummy rounds, indicating plans for integration and, in the future, the purchase of a larger batch for F-16 Jastrząb aircraft upgraded to the Viper standard.
The GBU-53/B StormBreaker is equipped with an innovative tri-mode guidance system that uses infrared imaging and millimeter-wave radar. The weapon can also use a semi-active laser seeker or GPS-aided inertial navigation with Link 16 data-link cueing to strike targets with precision. The bomb is capable of accurately hitting a moving target in adverse weather, low-visibility conditions, and under jamming.
StormBreaker has a total weight of 93 kg, of which 48 kg is the weight of the warhead, and compact dimensions: 176 cm in length and 15–18 cm in diameter. Its strike range is from 72 km against moving targets to 110 km against stationary targets. Thanks to the use of BRU-61/A multiple carriage racks, a single aircraft can carry a substantial number of bombs at the same time. In the case of the F-15E, this is 28 bombs, while the F-35 can carry 24 bombs, including eight in its internal weapons bays and 16 on underwing hardpoints.
It is also worth noting that in September 2025, RTX Corporation tested a prototype of the ground-launched GL StormBreaker guided small-diameter bomb.