A Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) team has been selected by the U.S. Defense Department to develop, engineer and manufacture missile defense systems on a contract worth $3.48 billion over seven years, Reuters has reported.
The companies will work to expand and maintain the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense antimissile protection hub.
Retuers wrote that GMD has interceptors located at the Army’s Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A 20, 000-mile fiber optic communications network cues the interceptors.
The system also uses radar and other sensors.
Reuters said the shield is the “only U.S. defense against long-range missiles that could be tipped with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads” and aims to protect the U.S. from missiles potentially fired from Iran and North Korea.
Boeing told the publication it has won around $18 million for GMD work since it formally became prime contractor on the GMD contract in January 2001.
