To advance its boost-phase missile defense efforts, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency intends to pick the winning design for its kinetic energy interceptor by the end of this year, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported this week (see GSN, Aug. 21).

Boeing and Lockheed Martin have joined forces to compete for the contract and are facing off against a joint Northrop Grumman and Raytheon team.

Simultaneously, agency officials have decided to slow the pace of the interceptor’s development by about two years to allow the technology to mature, according to Jane’s.  Once the winning team is selected, it will be asked to provide a prototype, with some operational capability, by 2011.

Program officials said that depending on an enemy missile’s range, its boost phase can last for 180 to 300 seconds.  To reach the missile in this time, the interceptor will need to be “big,” according to Terry Little, the agency’s KEI program director.

It will probably be “much more like a small (ICBM) than a traditional surface-to-air missile,” he added (Michael Sirak, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Sept. 10).

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