It's been a good three years since there was anything to say about the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's "Next Generation Interceptor" project -- a plan to build and buy probably thousands of interceptor missiles to put a missile shield over the U.S. Three years of quiet... shattered by an explosion of good news for Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) last week.

On Monday, Lockheed announced that MDA has awarded it a prime contract to build "the most modern, reliable, and technically advanced interceptor in the history of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system." In a separate statement, MDA added that both Lockheed and an unnamed rival (which was Northrop Grumman) submitted preliminary designs on competing interceptor missiles -- itself a $1.6 billion award split between the two teams -- but Lockheed came out on top.

and Raytheon had previously also competed for the contract. Boeing, having built the original GMD system, was a favorite to win the upgrade work, but Boeing dropped out of the NGI competition in 2019, taking Raytheon with it.

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Source Fool.com