P.M. BRIEFING : Hughes Wins Defense Project
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Hughes Aircraft Co. said today it was selected by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a big development project on the “brilliant pebbles” space defense program.
Hughes, a unit of General Motors’ Hughes Electronics division, won a preliminary design competition. The two-year, $50-million contract covers design, development and flight testing of an experimental vehicle against simulated intercontinental ballistic missile targets.
Brilliant pebbles, one of the more promising “Star Wars” technologies, is a plan under which an array of small space vehicles, no larger than a tactical missile, would be deployed in orbit to intercept and destroy incoming ICBMs.
Most of the work on the Lawrence Livermore contract will be done at Hughes’ Missile Systems Group engineering facility in Los Angeles.
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