U.S. Plans:  Army Awards $626 Million Kwajalein Contract

The U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command has awarded a $626 million dollar contract to Bechtel Corp. and Lockheed Martin to provide logistical, technical and engineering support to the Kwajalein Atoll test site, InsideDefense.com reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 9).

At its current value the contract runs for four years but it could be extended to 15 years and be worth up to $2.5 billion.  Located in the Marshall Islands, the Kwajealein Atoll is used for ballistic missile defense testing and space surveillance operations (John Liang, InsideDefense.com, Sept. 25).

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U.S. Plans:  USS Lake Erie’s Aegis Radar Tracks Missile

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency successfully tracked a missile last week using the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie’s SPY-1 radar for the first time, Defense Daily reported Monday (see GSN, Aug. 19).

Technicians tracked a Minuteman 3 ICBM during a Sept. 19 missile test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (see GSN, Sept. 20).  The coordinated effort allowed the agency to test the system without firing a separate missile, a spokesman said.

During the test, called a risk reduction flight for the agency’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, the Lake Erie tracked the boosting ballistic missile successfully, fused sensor track data with Vandenburg’s and transmitted the information to other computers in the Ground-based Midcourse Defense loop (see GSN, Aug. 21).  The agency will have data on the test in 70 days, the spokesman said (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, Sept. 23).

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