The eight-year contract is valued at approximately $760 million; the initial 11-month contract is valued at $27 million. The U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., manages the program for the MDA.

"We are excited and proud that the Missile Defense Agency has selected us to develop and demonstrate this promising capability," said G. Thomas Marsh, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

The Miniature Kill Vehicle (MKV) concept holds the potential to provide a more cost-effective approach to countering complex missile threats with a single launch. MKV will employ multiple small kill vehicles housed within one carrier vehicle, and would be used against ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage of flight. The system will identify all credible threat objects and will destroy them using individual kill vehicles.

"MKV represents a potential game-changing capability for missile defense. It is designed to counter future threats where it is hard to differentiate between threat objects. In such scenarios, MKV would address all credible threat objects with a single launch," said Doug Graham, vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

The selection of Lockheed Martin follows a 19-month concept development phase in which the company defined its MKV design, including the carrier vehicle and the kill vehicle subsystem; as well as the program plan, schedule and cost estimates for development and production.

Lockheed Martin's modular design approach can be configured with varying quantities of kill vehicles per carrier vehicle in order to address the full range of operational scenarios. The design is also flexible to allow its MKV system to be used with the variety of missile defense boosters being used and developed by the Missile Defense Agency.

Lockheed Martin is a leader in systems integration and the development of air and missile defense systems and technologies. These include the world's first successful hit-to-kill intercept with the Homing Overlay Experiment in 1984, the successful demonstration of the first complete weapon system using hit-to-kill technology with THAAD, as well as the world's first operational hit-to-kill missile defense system, PAC-3.

It also has experience in interceptor systems; kill vehicles; battle management command, control and communications; precision pointing and tracking optics; as well as radar and other sensors that enable signal processing and data fusion. The company makes significant contributions to all 10 major U.S. Missile Defense Systems and participates in several global missile defense partnerships.

Lockheed Martin
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