A Northrop Grumman-led team has won an eight-year, $4.5 billion contract to develop a ground-based, kinetic energy interceptor designed to destroy ballistic missiles, the Defense Department announced today. The Northrop Grumman-Raytheon team and a Lockheed Martin-Boeing team were each given $10 million contracts earlier this year for concept design work on the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. DOD today selected Northrop's team to "develop and test a land-based interceptor for use in a 'layered' ballistic missile defense system, possibly in 2010 [to]...