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Raytheon and the Navy on Thursday, March 25, held a virtual delivery ceremony for the first Tomahawk Block V, which updates the nation’s long-range, first-strike naval weapon with new planning, control, navigation and communications upgrades.

Still to come are a version of the Block V upgraded to hit moving ships, and another with an advanced warhead, Raytheon officials said.

“The Tomahawk Block V missile provides revolutionary capabilities and enhancements to defeat tomorrow’s threats, today,� said Chris Daily, Raytheon program area director for naval air missiles.

Kim Ernzen, vice president of naval power at Raytheon Missiles & Defense, said the Tomahawk holds an important place in U.S. history after being fired more than 2,300 times in combat over the last three decades.

“For our military, it is a recognizable name, and it plays an iconic role in protecting our freedom,� she said.

Noting that Raytheon delivered its 4,000th Tomahawk in 2017, Ernzen said the program is a point of pride for employees at Raytheon, the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ region’s biggest employer with more than 13,000 workers.

The Navy is planning to upgrade its existing Tomahawk Block IV missiles to the Block V configuration, and procure Block V missiles going forward.

In March 2020, Raytheon was awarded a $493 million Navy contract to upgrade Tomahawk Block IV missiles to Block Vs and a $148 million contract to produce the first lots of all-new Block Vs.

Ernzen said the missile delivered Thursday was a Block IV Tomahawk upgraded to a Block V configuration, but new Block Vs will begin coming off the assembly lines in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ later this year.

Meanwhile, Raytheon is working on two variants of the new Tomahawk: the Block Va, or Maritime Tomahawk, which will feature a multimode target seeker to enable it to hit moving shipping targets; and the Block Vb, which features a “multieffects� warhead with new bunker-busting penetrating technology.

The Block V delivery comes after the Navy successfully completed flight tests of the new missile last November, when two Block V missiles and one Block IV missile fired from a guided-missile destroyer off the coast of California hit their targets.

Though details remain secret, the Navy says the new Block V Tomahawks feature upgrades to navigation and communications, its mission-planning software and its weapon-control systems.

Developed in the 1970s, in service since the 1980s and first used in the Gulf War in 1991, the Tomahawk can be launched from ships or submarines. The Tomahawk is only used by the U.S. Navy and the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy.

The Tomahawk has been used in every major U.S. conflict since the Gulf War, from actions in Bosnia and Yugoslavia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to strategic strikes against al-Qaida and Islamic State militants, and more recently strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018.

More like a drone aircraft than a missile, the Tomahawk features a small aircraft turbofan jet engine and can carry a 1,000-pound warhead more than 1,000 miles, flying low at subsonic speeds and avoiding radar by hugging the ground.

The Tomahawk has periodically undergone major upgrades, adding GPS navigation in the 1990s and, with the Block IV in 2006, the ability to be retargeted midflight along with improved GPS, mission planning and control systems.