Northrop Grumman lands $1 billion missile defense deal

Northrop Grumman Corp. won a prime contract potentially worth $1 billion over 10 years from the Missile Defense Agency to continue its work on the Joint National Integration Center Research and Development contract, the company announced this week.

Under the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems division of Reston, Va., will help the agency integrate missile defense elements into an operations defense system.

Northrop Grumman will perform the work on the research and development contract at the Joint National Integration Center at Shriver Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. The company has 350 employees and 600 subcontractor workers at the location.

The Joint National Integration Center is the Defense Department's missile defense wargame center for military commanders to develop operational concepts. Its expanded mission includes becoming a focal point for the integration, deployment and operation of the country's Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Northrop Grumman has been the lead contractor at the Joint National Integration Center since 1995, where it has provided support for the development and application of local and distributed modeling and simulation, wargaming and testing and analysis of national and theater air and defense missile systems.

Northrop Grumman employs more than 125,000 workers and had fiscal 2004 revenue of $29.9 billion. The company ranks No. 2 on Washington Technology's 2005 Top 100 list of federal prime contractors.