The US Defense Department has awarded a 31 million dollars contract to Boeing Co. of Anaheim, California, for the first phase of development of sea-based radar for testing a missile defense system, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The military is expected to begin testing with a sea-based platform in September 2005, said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the US Missile Defense Agency.
"This means we've decided not to go forward with a land-based radar for the test bed," Lehner said.
The Sea-Based Test X-band Radar will offer more flexibility because the system can be moved throughout the northern Pacific Ocean test area to support all flight tests planned for the Pentagon's ground-based missile defense program in the test bed stretching from Alaska to Hawaii, Lehner said.
(Xinhua News Agency August 2, 2002)
