Interocean American Shipping will be awarded a firm-fixed-price contract by the US Military Sealift Command for the operation and maintenance of the Sea-Based X-Band Radar platform (SBX-1).

The $28.18m contract includes four one-year option periods which, if exercised, will bring the cumulative value of the contract to $165.2m.

The SBX-1 radar, to be deployed to the Pacific Ocean, provides ballistic missile-tracking and countermeasures information to the ground-based midcourse defence system (GMD) for interceptor missiles.

Work will be carried out at sea, with completion to take place by September 2012.