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been invested in Aegis and related systems. Lockheed Martin's work on Aegis has won it accolades from the Department of Defense numerous times over the years, including a 2003 award for the contractor's continual cost, technical and scheduling improvements. Those awards often stem from the company's own Engineering Excellence efforts, which are aimed at improving processes in a way that simultaneously improves quality and effectiveness while also reducing cost to develop such complex systems and the time it takes to bring them from the idea phase into reality. Along with those awards, Lockheed Martin can point to continued investment by the Department of Defense in expanding and extending Aegis capabilities and a vote of confidence in the work done to date. In late October 2009, Lockheed landed a $ 1 billion, five- year contract that extends the work it is doing to design, develop, integrate, test, deliver and install additional Aegis BMD systems through the end of 2014. Japanese vessel had a successful flight test of the Aegis system. Around the same time, the system aboard the USS Lake Erie managed to successfully detect, track and destroy two ballistic missiles at the same time. In June 2008, the Aegis BMD system aboard the Lake Erie successfully intercepted a short- range ballistic missile target in its terminal phase. That occurred several months after the same vessel, with a one-time modification to its Aegis BMD Weapon System, managed to detect, track and target a US satellite that had gone into errant orbit and was in danger of crashing to earth. In that case, the Aegis BMD guided an SM- 3 missile to a successful intercept, destroying the satellite and eliminating the risk to populated areas. The US Navy sees its fleet as a key part of an overall missile defense network, as many of the technological assets needed to identify, track and target such attacks are already in place on those vessels. Over the course of their lifetimes, some $ 60 billion has Lockheed Martin NOVEMBER 09 www. bus- ex. com 171