U.S. missile-defense experts are starting to install electronic equipment at a new anti-ballistic-missile site in northern Poland near the Baltic coast. Officials of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Dahlgren, Va., announced a $36.4 million contract to the Lockheed Martin Corp. Mission Systems and Training segment in Moorestown, N.J., to install Aegis Ashore equipment at the missile-defense site in Redzikowo, Poland. Aegis Ashore is the land-based component of the Aegis ballistic missile defense (BMD) system developed originally for deployment at sea aboard specially equipped U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers. The land-based Aegis Ashore system uses the same AN/SPY-1 radar; command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) systems; Vertical Launch System; computer processors; display system; power supplies; and water coolers that are used onboard the Navy's new construction Aegis BMD destroyers.
