The U.S. Defense Department said Friday it had awarded defense contractor Raytheon a three-year contract worth up to $442 million to produce and test a weapon to destroy clouds of enemy missile warheads and decoys, Reuters reported.
The effort is aimed at developing a U.S. capability to simultaneously destroy a number of incoming weapons that could include decoys as well as actual ballistic missiles (see related GSN story, today). The project is expected to be finished by December 2011, the Pentagon said (Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters, Oct. 31).